Collaborative e-learning environments with cognitive computing and big data

The actual scenario of e-learning environments and techniques is fast-changing from both the technology side and the users’ perspective. In this vein, applications and services as well as methodologies are evolving rapidly, running after the more recent innovations and thus adopting distributed cloud architectures to provide the most advanced solutions. In this situation, two influential technological factors emerge: the former is cognitive computing, which can provide learners and teachers with innovative services enhancing the whole learning process, also introducing improvements in human-machine interactions; the latter is a new wave of big data derived from heterogeneous sources, which impacts on educational tasks and acts as enabler for the development of new analytics-based models, for both management activities and education tasks. Concurrently, from the side of learning techniques, these phenomena are revamping collaborative models so that we should talk about communities rather than classrooms. In these circumstances, it seems that current Learning Management Systems (LMS) may need a redesign. In this respect, the paper outlines the evolutionary trends of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) environments and presents the results achieved within two experiences carried on in two Italian universities.