History
Knowledge Engineering and Robotics Lab
Knowledge engineering and Robotics Lab is the result of many years of research and development of a novel paradigm in CS, AI, Knowledge Sciences and Robotics. The R&D spanned over 18 years.
Dr. Rina Zviel-Girshin (rinazg@ruppin.ac.il) has been researching and teaching for 18 years a great variety of subjects and courses in Israeli higher education institutions: Technion, Ben-Gurion University, Open University and Ruppin Academic Center.
One of the lab aims is to use the best pedagogical theories and methods the educational research has provided over the course of 20th century for the 21st century students benefit.
It is clear that we are faced with a tragic paradox in this field. On the one hand we have the technology, especially ICT and the magic wand of the INTERNET. On the other hand the educational research of more than a hundred years has produced a great consensus of well defined modern educational approaches, including very powerful practical empirically tested educational know-how. The meeting of those two great tides of knowledge should have made it very easy to create excellent CS courses. Alas, the paradox is it did not. And the case could even be made for the argument that the deluge of new ideas and technologies has confused the faculty and students alike to a degree it became a distraction and created a problem instead of solution in this a-priori problematic area.
For this purpose a special CS approach is needed. Such CS paradigm would combine the precise engineering methods and philosophy with the very flexible, art-like, human centered educational approach. The Organic Knowledge (OK) paradigm, though being a general CS paradigm, applicable
to a wide variety of real life problems.
The educational research has always been torn between the general agreement upon the best practices for the students and the real life limitations which made the desired impossible in practice.
