Workshop on Grid Learning Services

The historical domain of ITS is currently confronted with a double challenge. On the one side the availability of Internet worldwide and the globalisation have
tremendously amplified the demand for distance learning (tutoring, training,
bidirectional access to Information, ubiquitous and lifelong education, learning as a side effect of interaction). On the other, technologies evolve with an unprecedented speed as well as their corresponding computational theories, models, tools, applications. One of the most important current evolution in networking is represented by GRID computing. Not only the concept promises the availability of important computing resources to be significantly enhanced by GRID services, but identifies an even more crucial roadmap for fundamental research in Computing around the notion of Semantic GRID services, as opposed/complementary to the traditional one of Web accessible products and, more recently, Web services. We do not discuss here the two alternative viewpoints; just anticipate their co-existence, the scientific debate about them and the choice in this workshop of the approach Grid Service.
Assuming a service view for e-Learning, the adaptation to the service user – be it a human, a community of humans or a set of artificial Agents operating on the GRID – entails the dynamic construction of models of the service user by the service provider. Services need to be adapted to users, thus they have to compose their configuration according to their understanding of the user. When the user is a learner – as it is the case in e-Learning – the corresponding formal model has to learn during its life cycle. Machine learning meets necessarily human learning in the sense that it becomes a necessary precondition for composing adaptive services for human needs.
The workshop addresses the issues of integrating human and machine learning into models, systems, applications and abstracting them into theories for advanced Human learning, based on the dynamic generation of GRID services.