Advanced Learning Technologies

Abstract

International audienceAdvanced Learning Technologies (ALTs) are artifacts (technologies) that enable, support, or enhance human learning, emerging from the most recent advances avail able in both areas. There are nowadays two real challenges to be faced when trying to outline in detail this definition of ALTs as a meaningful, full-fledged state of the art of the key concepts for future use, not just an historical overview of socio-technical approaches. The main technical challenge is due to the unprecedented speed of innovation that we notice in Information and Communication Technologies: ICTs; in particular: the Web. The educational challenge is a consequence of the technical one. An account of educational uses of technologies has to consider the impact of ICT innovation onto unexpected changes in human practices in any domain, modifying substantially the classical human learning cycle that since the nineteenth century was mainly considered to be managed within formal teaching institutions such as the schools. Therefore, our interpretation of advanced will be in the sense of dynamic, experimental, to be implemented and evaluated in order to limit the risk that what we describe today as advanced will be considered obsolete in a few months. This vision of ALTs, however, does not underestimate the interest for a reasoned analysis of past experiences. On the one side this analysis will guide us to avoid well-known pitfalls, on the other it will teach us lessons not only about how to exploit the potential learning effects of current advanced technologies - the applicative approach - but also how to envision, elicit, estimate, evaluate the potential promising effects of new technologies and settings to be studied and developed within human learning scenarios - the experimental approach - the last, enabling scientific progress both in Informatics and in Psychology of human learning