Author: Piet A. M. Kommers

Dr. Piet Kommers is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology at Twente University and Lector at Fontys University of Professional Education in the Netherlands. His research field is the design and application of media in learning situations. His courses are Multimedia Design, Virtual Reality and Societal Effects of ICT. Concept mapping and metaphoric design stages play an important role here.

Projects are undertaken in the field of multicultural communication. The learning processes at individual and societal levels manifest in terms of existential expressions and awareness. Media play an ever more important role in it.

Conceptual representations for meta-cognitive awareness become a default language for identity and road maps for changing oneself. The high saturation of communication infrastructure offers the opportunity to participate in learning communities. Sharing experience and finding the right sparring partners for exploring alternative approaches in one's job and continuous learning becomes realistic and offers a more dynamic personal development.

Schools, Professional Training and Human Resource Management face the challenge to include and build upon personal growth and attitudes. The priority in learning is not restricted to the access and assimilation of knowledge and skills. Finding ways to convey one's own further learning is priority number one. The WWW, adjacent to the face-to-face communication, is a valuable support facility. The art of designing WWW-based facilities and procedures is keen on both the nature and culture of the human mind. We may expect that education in the new era will have less and less to do with the transfer of knowledge on the shelf; the key issue is to facilitate the new learning modalities of the younger generation. We can hardly fall back on proven methodologies if it comes to media design`. In a certain way it is a self-organizing process where prior goals undergo evolution continuously. As new media appear daily, it is vital that those who are responsible for learning, communication and cooperation are willing to play with its potential; they will soon discover that a sense of pragmatism helps to attain the higher missions as well.