Anticipating the Digital University

The University of the Digital Society is based on interactions that facilitate learning in a new pragmatic context. Catalysts involved in the learning process replace the traditional professor. Students dynamically constitute classes of shared interest, which cease to exist once learning goals are achieved or prove unattainable. Learning, procedural in nature, takes place in the interaction, eventually embodied in a project. The digital infrastructure of the widely distributed, new virtual learning environment must be specified in terms of educational goals. Extremely rich data and many different computations will have to be seamlessly integrated. Modeling and access to data, corresponding to intuitive forms of interaction, will exceed all other forms of computation - a major challenge to everyone involved in conceiving methods appropriate to the new education. Learning driven by anticipation -proactive acquisition and dissemination of knowledge instead of training in reaction to the problems we face - is the basis of the new education.