Cognitive Computing A research blog by Ashwin Ram, PhD

In cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychology, and education, a growing body of research supports the view that the learning process is strongly influenced by the learner’s goals. Investigators in each of these areas have independently pursued the common issues of how learning goals arise, how they affect learner decisions of when and what to learn, and how they guide the learning process. The fundamental tenet of goal-driven learning is that learning is largely an active and strategic process in which the learner, human or machine, attempts to identify and satisfy its information needs in the context of its tasks and goals, its prior knowledge, its capabilities, and environmental opportunities for learning.

This chapter discusses fundamental questions for goal-driven learning: the motivations for adopting a goal-driven model of learning, the basic goal-driven learning framework, the specific issues raised by the framework that a theory of goal-driven learning must address, the types of goals that can influence learning, the types of influences those goals can have on learning, and the pragmatic implications of the goal-driven learning model.

Read the paper:

Learning, Goals, and Learning Goals

by Ashwin Ram, David Leake

www.cc.gatech.edu/faculty/ashwin/papers/er-95-03.pdf