Making e-Learning a Service Oriented Utility: The European Learning Grid Infrastructure Project

This paper describes the ELeGI (www.elegi.org) Project. ELeGI has the ambitious goal of developing software technologies for service oriented effective human learning. ELeGI will create new potential for moving from the current information transfer paradigm focused on content and on the key authoritative figure of the teacher who provides information towards learning paradigm focused on knowledge construction using experiential based and collaborative learning approaches in a contextualised, personalised and ubiquitous way. We have chosen a synergic approach, sometimes called “human centred design”, to replace the classical, applicative approach to learning. With consideration of humans at the centre, learning is clearly a social, constructive phenomenon. It occurs as a side effect of interactions, conversations and enhanced presence in dynamic Virtual Communities created and deployed using Grid technologies.