Looking beyond e-learning: the impact of cognitive computing

In the past years, a continuous innovation process characterized the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL), to the aim of implementing any newly emerged technology inside the different facets of teaching and learning tasks. Currently, something different is happening, mainly related to the so- called exponential learning, due to the exponential growth of training demand. In fact, new knowledge and skills must be delivered at a speed never seen before, pushed by, e.g., Industry 4.0 and other European Community programs, as well as by the new wave of cognitive computing technology (i.e., cognitive managers, cognitive architecture engineers, cognitive system programming, etc.). The authors believe that this paradigm must be extended, causing the shift from classrooms to communities where we can speak of men and machines, rather than men or machines, thus enhancing humans’ faculties and assisting them in the transformation of skills. Such a revolutionary approach requires that the next generation of TEL platforms include a variety of novel cognitive services to enable storing and using big data. To achieve such results, we will be forced to respect two fundamental constraints: time and content, with contents that will have to be ready within the time learners will need them. Besides, the services will be profiled for different users’ levels, such as learning professional and learning business consumer. Also interfaces will be completely different from those we are used today, because we will be able to talk with machines, whose answers will result from a very quick and effective natural language processing and decision-making methods. We are on a turning point of training processes, a very challenging and important moment in which the cognitive approach will lead to a transformation, and e-learning and platforms are not excluded. The paper presents the general vision of authors about this new scenario and some preliminary applications to a virtual community platform where a big data-enabled architecture and some prototypes of cognitive services are under experimentation.