Collaborative Learning Concept for Lifelong Learning

Most of the articles published in the last years highlight teaching and learning approaches and technologies integrated in complex applications and present the concepts used for educational content creation and delivery. They refer to the approaches and methodologies used in self and collaborative learning, including problemand project-based learning. The proposal is focused on advanced concepts for improving the online training services and how a generic framework can be customized for lifelong learning, effective recruitment techniques and virtual consultancy. The paper underlines the Web 2.0 concept and its application to non-formal and informal learning, especially virtual training, career development, or online tuition. The article is based on a virtual collaboration prototype that supports interpersonal collaboration and advanced human-computer interaction. It complies with a cloud-based open architecture adapted to the requirements of a generic collaborative/interactive learning infrastructure and the manner it can be customized for different business domains. It also illustrates how Computer-Supported Collaborative Training (CSCT) tools improve the knowledge building process and which solutions should be adopted for avoiding the CSCT weaknesses. The generic framework for Computer Supported Collaborative Training presented in the article should fix a set of issues we met during our training/tuition activities: problems with the training staff, time management, responsibilities during the training process, human-system interaction, content management, and cost effectiveness.