The article highlights the problem of using numerous artificial intelligence (AI) services effectively in educators’ and academic staff’s research activities. The Aixploria catalogue has over 5,000 tools, but academic professionals often lack time to view, test and select them for specific research needs. A tool for the personalised selection of AI services using the author’s WPadV4 software has been proposed to overcome this problem. On this basis, it is possible to create educational packages that enable the formation of structured collections of services according to selected criteria. The work implements the selection and classification of AI tools from the Aixploria catalogue following the main stages of scientific and pedagogical research: literature analysis and problem statement, data collection and processing, analysis and interpretation of results, peer review, and dissemination. For each stage, relevant services are to be selected, and their brief descriptions are created and presented in tables automatically converted into web resources – personalised educational packages ready for direct use by educators, academic researchers, and professional development providers. It avoids the routine processing of large amounts of unstructured information and focuses on meaningful aspects of research. The described solution was tested within the framework of international educational and scientific events, particularly in the V4+ EDUPORT project (2022–2023) and at the AISE 2024 conference. To further assess the effectiveness of the developed approach, an expert survey among specialists in the field of ICT in education was conducted.

The integration of IT into educational processes based on knowledge requires an interdisciplinary pedagogical–informatics approach. However, current technology cannot optimally synchronize pedagogical theories (e.g., learning styles, Bloom's taxonomy, and TPACK framework) with IT tools (e.g., information processing and software for adaptive, blended, and collaborative learning). The key problem is the absence of a universal representation of knowledge that can be understood by both humans and computers. However, both pedagogical research and technological research operate only with the abstract concept of knowledge, so teachers must adapt to the existing technologies. The authors solve this problem in university teaching and research by introducing, as a representation of knowledge, so-called virtual knowledge, which is a specific information structure in the form of a database table. Teachers and students can manually or automatically insert learning content, in the form of unstructured and heterogeneous data, into the tables. Accordingly, it is structured so that it can then be processed by software and the activities of teachers are automated using hypertext links to the hybrid environment. Using examples from university practice, the authors explain the non-relational database paradigm of creating knowledge tables and how such an all-in-one system works as personal IT support for teachers. It consists of the educational software WPad, WPad BVI (which was tested in teaching blind and visually impaired students) and PIKS, and a hybrid IT infrastructure. In the form of screenshots, the authors illustrate how the learning content was inserted into the knowledge WPad tables within adaptive, blended, and collaborative learning. They also present the theoretical idea of a CSU infinite time loop of knowledge processing, which is the basis for future research. The novelty of the presented IT system is supported by registration at the patent office.

The integration of educational technologies in education is frequently examined through case studies, often neglecting iterative and collaborative approaches such as participatory action research (PAR). This article presents an interdisciplinary pedagogical-informatics approach to designing personal educational software that supports and automates a wide range of teaching and research activities in real-world settings. By introducing the concept of virtual knowledge, the software works as a "cognitive translator", which enables teachers to manage their entire educational workflow—covering content creation, pedagogical tasks, file transfers, communication, and operations across networks, clouds, and institutional virtual learning environments. Unlike generic global technologies, which are often adapted for education but rely on vast, non-educational content and information, this technology is explicitly declared as "pure" educational technology. It is uniquely grounded in teachers' knowledge flows and is specifically designed to support pedagogical purposes and teaching activities. The article explores its pedagogical and technological benefits, demonstrating its practical applications in university teaching, including the development of innovative teaching methodologies and thematic educational materials. Finally, it discusses the CSU model of an endless knowledge-processing time loop for digitizing PAR, offering a theoretical framework developed through over 15 years of research.

The article considers the peculiarities of forming virtual systems of open science in higher education institutions, which is an essential prerequisite for training ICT-competent specialists capable of active, practical, scientifically justified application of the most modern ICT in their professional activities. The modern European trends in the formation of cloud-oriented systems of open science in higher education institutions are considered; the experience of implementing the services of cloud-based systems of open science to support the processes of scientific cooperation within “V4 Educational Academic Portal for Integrating IT into Education” (EDUPORT) is summarized; the prospects of using cloud-based platforms and adaptive content management services in the activity of a teacher and scientist are determined. The cloud-oriented IT support system for research activities of a virtual scientific team of the EDUPORT project consists of network ICT infrastructure, educational software WPadV4 and PIKS channels – online application (PHP/MySQL) – personal information and communication system of project participants. The experience of using this cloud-oriented open science system to support communication; joint work; adaptive content management; creation and use of electronic educational resources in organizing educational and scientific cooperation in virtual international teams created based on several higher education institutions is summarized. It was established that due to the broader involvement of means and services of scientific and educational cloud-oriented platforms in the educational and research process of higher education institutions, as well as various types of corporate cloud services, it is possible to achieve positive changes in the implementation of educational and scientific activities, applying new forms and models of its organization, and achieve positive effect both on the results of training and on the development of scientific research, improving the level of their organization, increasing efficiency.

Despite the tremendous advancements in computers, the current level of technology for e-learning design is inadequate for the needs of teachers, and this is especially true at a time of increased demand for distance learning in which the teacher needs to process e-learning content stored in both offline and online spaces. In order to minimise information overload, the teacher needs a simple, low-cost, hybrid, all-in-one system that can offer personalised e-learning design. e-Learning tools of this type that can be used for IT applications in education have not been described in the literature and e-learning focuses on testing the suitability of existing IT tools for learning activities. The shortcomings of current technologies arise from the fact that the hardware, software and computer file formats are incompatible, and cannot simulate mental processes in the way that e-learning requires. In this paper, we present the WPad educational software as a key element of a universal, personal, hybrid e-learning design system. This software has evolved over 15 years based on the principle of automating human mental activities using ‘virtual knowledge’ as the representation of knowledge. It is a simple database table that is readable by both machines and humans. The empirical and systematic phases of this research are described to show how an individual (including blind and visually impaired users) can insert content into WPad tables, and how these then generate HTML tables for the design of curriculum content. Examples of automating an individual’s activities on a computer or on a virtual machine as part of collaborative learning are presented in the form of screenshots. The bulk knowledge processing paradigm is compared with the relational database paradigm, and a separate section is devoted to the technological obstacles associated with e-Learning design.

Nowadays, users need to work simultaneously with many files and folders on their computer and various resources on the Internet, including several software pieces. It means that they have many windows open simultaneously, and they must continuously switch between different opened applications such as web browsers, text editors, or audio-visual programs. These problems are also crucial to blind or visually impaired users, for whom this issue is even more difficult. Due to the nature of their work, i.e., they do not use the mouse and cannot see the video and graphic content, they have to remember, at each moment, which programs they have open and which they no longer use. In this paper, we propose an approach that consists of universal software, where, on the one hand, the user can collect and view data; on the other hand, he can produce ready-made output packages in simple web pages. This solution consists of two main parts: an offline softwareWPad and the online - Personal Knowledge Information System (PIKS). We propose a simplified and more automated version of an earlier developed WPad software system called WPad for BVI, which visually impaired persons and other beginners can use. The solution was tested by two BVI users (one BVI student and one BVI teacher) and several non-disabled teachers and students from Poland and Slovakia. Feedback from users was collected that will be used to improve the system further.

A teacher currently needs to acquire a huge amount of educational information and knowledge as part of his/her practice for the purposes of teaching, self-study, publishing, research, language support and related activities. In the academic environment, so-called learning management systems (LMSs), especially Moodle in the European Union, have proven suitable for the processing of educational content under e-Learning. LMSs usually function as online platform, at the same time as a supplement to academic information systems (AIS) on the local servers of universities. These are used by a larger number of participants, so these do not always meet the pedagogical needs of the teacher in all the activities he/she does. For example, these do not allow multilingual support, multiple searches and mass processing of e-Learning content. There are a large number of articles in the scientific literature describing the design of add-on modules for LMS. The authors offer their own approach to solving the problem of processing educational information to support a virtual team's work. As part of collaborative research in the field of technology-enhanced education and e-Learning design, the international team in the V4 EDUPORT project is implementing a personalized hybrid system on the IT infrastructure consisting of a specially designed desktop application WPad or web application (PIKS) and a common shared remote computer (virtual computer on a cloud server with Windows 2022). In this paper, the researchers share their experiences gained with their universities' academic LMSs (Moodle and AIS) and compare their personalization capabilities level to the teacher level and their use in the cloud. Part of current and future research is the development of the PIKS internet application, which operates as a multi-functional communication channel for e-Learning purposes (including use for the visually impaired). .

Research on IT integration into teaching is an interdisciplinary field that has both educational (didactics) and informatics components. In particular, the situation with the Covid 19 pandemic has forced a push to address personal IT support for teachers in distance education. However, this runs into the problem of the lack of personal educational software, so that in practice the teacher has to adapt to existing technology and test how it can be used for teaching. In this context, the work of a university teacher requires the mass creation of educational content, its transfer between offline computers (laptop, classroom computers) and online environments (web, virtual learning environments, academic information systems, clouds, networks). Given the nature of university teaching, IT support solutions for self-study also face a challenge. However, no single technology covers such a broad scope, so there is a lack of universal solutions. The authors minimize this gap by programming universal software tailored to the needs of the teacher and by building a combined offline/online IT infrastructure on which to conduct the research. Collaborative research by an international team using the infrastructure is a solution to automate the creation of educational packages, including the multi-lingual support. The article clarifies the categories of barriers that the team had to overcome, either from a didactic or an informatics perspective. Here, a new paradigm using a specific data structure (called virtual knowledge) for the rapid reduction and concentration of educational content was proven to simulate virtually any teacher activity. Therefore, the goal of further research is to use the results and experiences to date to build a multilingual learning portal.

Human-computer interaction is a multidisciplinary field that aims to streamline and automate human activities that involve working with computers. This field includes IT support for mental processes, which is based on a human-centered approach that involves either human-centered computing or a focus on the individual user. There is a lack of universal software, so that the user must use dozens of different single-purpose software products to process large amounts of information; the user must adapt to the technology. Our research approach is based on the design of a so-called virtual knowledge, the basis of which is an ordinary database table, into which the user inserts his information in natural language. This informatics structure representing knowledge is controlled by the software Writing Pad (WPad). It is developed as an all-in-one tool to replace the dozens of software products that the user would have to use instead. It also reduces the number of user interfaces and the thousands of necessary mouse clicks between online links and offline paths. The paper explains this human-centered software design, including a demonstration of how we used the knowledge table when writing this paper. The use of such tables for visually impaired users in computer-based learning solutions is also described.

From the point of view of integrating IT into teaching, current technologies do not provide a universal solution for teachers’ personal support and have a shorter lifespan than required by teachers and educational processes. As a result, technology cannot be adapted to a wide range of teaching activities, and instead, teachers have to adapt to the technology. This paper presents a universal solution for support based on an interdisciplinary approach to the integration of IT into university teaching and learning, self-study, publishing, research, and other personal activities performed by a teacher, including certain activities of students. It is based on the development of our own in-house universal IT system (educational software, communication channels and combined offline/online infrastructure), which can be used for any form of engineering or STEM teaching. The uniqueness of our solution is based on the design of so-called virtual knowledge, which makes it possible to insert concentrated educational content in the form of text, images, audio and other computer files, in a suitable way. From this virtual knowledge, educational knowledge tables are created using WPad educational software. This allows for simultaneous conversion of the tables into HTML format and their placement on the faculty’s virtual learning space or the web. In this paper, we describe the use of this system and how it works on an infrastructure developed for the integration of IT into teaching. The automation of the teacher’s work (including applications for visually impaired people) through the creation of educational packages is described, and this will also form the subject of further research.

EXPERIENCE WITH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PERSONAL IT SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS IN TEACHING, RESEARCH, PUBLISHING AND E-LEARNING USING IN-HOUSE EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE

Computers cannot support all the activities performed by a teacher. Due to the lack of appropriate Information Technology (IT) tools, a teacher must adapt to existing technologies. The educational software WPad, developed within the framework of the authors' research on technology-enhanced learning (TEL), offers a universal solution. WPad controls the so-called virtual knowledge into which the teacher inserts content to simulate teaching activities. In this paper, TEL design in research and for publishing support are described based on examples from university teaching. The methodology of synchronising teaching and computing activities is also explained using the idea of building a personal information system.

Current learning technologies do not meet the needs of teachers and individuals. There is an information overload and the academic field has also become technology driven. Rather than technology operating according to the teacher’s needs, individuals are required to adapt to the existing software. Due to the incompatibilities between software, hardware and the formats of computer files, information chaos is growing to huge proportions. Unless educational algorithms (i.e., what is done with educational content) are defined, computer algorithms, software, and systems for the integration of IT into teaching cannot be designed. As part of our research into the automation of knowledge-based processes, which includes educational processes, we have managed to solve the problem of how to simulate human knowledge and pass it on to a computer, so that it can ‘understand’ it. Our solution is a model of virtual knowledge that can be processed quickly by a computer. The computer ‘understands’ this as a universal representation of knowledge, while from a teacher's point of view, it is an ordinary table into which the teacher inserts educational content. This virtual knowledge (having the structure of a database table) acts a kind of knowledge container that isomorphically connects the mental processes of the teacher with the physical processes of the computer. Our WPad educational software is programmed to control the structure (content), so, it is possible to create educational knowledge tables and personal knowledge base for any activity that the teacher performs during teaching, or research. The teacher does not need to adapt to the technology; instead, the technology adapts to the teacher's activities. Since the software runs on every Windows computer and works as a multiple-in-one educational IT tool for a variety of lessons, it is probably the most efficient and cheapest technology solution. It is used to support the integration of technology into classroom and distance learning. Future research will focus on the creation of multilingual educational packages.

In the scientific literature, educational technology is often criticised as not being always optimised for effective teaching, as mostly technology-driven, not derived from knowledge as the basic key element of teaching. In this context, teaching is a typical knowledge-based process, which requires to deliver a concentrated educational knowledge within strictly limited time. Although digital technology should be knowledge-driven, a computer does not know what knowledge or educational knowledge is. An interdisciplinary definition of knowledge does not exist. Within the long-term research under an umbrella of technology-enhanced learning, this problem was solved by design of universal knowledge representation. This representation, so called- ‘virtual knowledge’, is both machine-readable and human-readable. It enables an individual user (teacher, student) to construct, transmit and share educational knowledge and content using all-in-one educational software in a user-friendly way and without a need of specific computer skills. This paper explains the essence of the design of the knowledge-based educational technology, which is based on the virtual knowledge and development of the educational software that enables the batch-based knowledge processing using the virtual knowledge and transfer of educational content through a shared infrastructure. The infrastructure consists of a combination of off-line (teacher’s computers, classroom computers) and online (clouds, virtual machines) environments. The following sections present the use of the educational knowledge tables and modelling the educational packages and language corpora to support writing scientific articles to explain a way of the knowledge-based educational design.

At the global level, too much information is rapidly overwhelming individuals. The main challenge is how to adapt digital technologies to human thinking without digital stress. If the interaction between a computer and a human is understood as a relationship between two powerful processors, the weakest point of the technology is the issue of how to improve the flow of information from a person to the computer. The aim of this paper is to present an alternative knowledge-based software design and a suitable IT infrastructure for applying a non-relational database paradigm for this purpose. In this context, the technological approach uses so-called “virtual knowledge” can help individuals and knowledge workers to achieve better knowledge processing. The human-centered “all-in-one” supporting computing system presented here can be universally applied to support any knowledge-based process and can replace numerous other software that individuals would need to use for the same activities (e.g., teaching and learning, self-study, research, publishing, cloud/offline interaction, personal knowledge management).

The current trend towards automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies, known as Industry 4.0, has also an impact on engineering education. This has a significant influence on the field of research on information communication technology (ICT) for education. It means that the digitalization of teaching processes requires not only suitable supporting software tools but also a suitable infrastructure for managing the flow and transmission of educational knowledge within this infrastructure (clouds, remote desktops, virtual spaces, personal computers). In this context, the authors aim to fill a gap in universal ICT support for teaching, and the state of the art in ICT in general. This gap involves reassessing the actual issues in modern education technology and applications, and requires a more universal approach, because global software or cloud and Web services are not automatically suitable solutions for use in personalized teaching situations where the key players are teachers, i.e. individuals. An approach (also supported within the international research Consortium V4+ACARDC), is illustrated by examples such as testing clouds (cloud content management), virtual spaces, and the development of educational packages and supporting software for visually impaired people.

The article highlights the promising ways of providing access to cloud-based platforms and tools to support collaborative learning and research processes. It is emphasized that the implementation of cloud computing services is a promising trend in the development of modern ICT pedagogical systems. The concept of cloud-based open learning and research platform is considered. The benchmarking studies of using ICT tools for learning and research within the pedagogical systems of higher education are fulfilled. The analysis and evaluation of the existing experience of using different types of software packages to support learning and research processes within the cloud-based environment are proposed. The issues of integration of knowledge-based services, language technologies and database network services within the open systems of learning and research are covered. A model of the cloud-based open learning and research collaborative environment involving the use of cloud-based components based on AWS virtual desktop, IBM Box, WPadV4 and other tools is substantiated. The reasonable ways of tools selection are considered and the prospects for their use within the cloud-based open learning and research platform in pedagogical systems of higher education are described. The research methods are the analysis of official international documents, publications on the subject of the research, observation, comparison, the analysis of the experience of using educational and scientific network packages, application of cloud technologies, benchmarking studies and experimental studies. Conclusions and recommendations encompass the application of cloud-based open learning and research technologies covering research platforms, scientific and educational network packages, and also cloud services for collecting, submitting and processing data as a promising trend in the development and modernization of the educational environment of higher education institutions and collaborative research.

Despite the progress of ICT, the level of its integration into education is not satisfactorily resolved. A criticism is technocentrism, which results in the fact that teachers and researchers must adapt to the technology and not vice versa. In this context, multi-purpose software tools with longer life cycles are missing, as are personalized solutions where the technology is better adapted to teaching needs, and the user does not see any boundaries between off-line and online environments. In the framework of long-term research aimed at automating the knowledge-based processes, the authors have developed a specific paradigm based on the virtual knowledge unit (vKWU), which works as a knowledge representation. This specific data structure is controlled by own in-house software WPad (written by the main author of this paper) which enables batch processing, management and transfer of human knowledge that is inserted by the user into the vKWU in natural language. Because this vKWU is both human-readable and machine-readable, it allows the authors to solve the automation of knowledge-based processes and to model educational software as an all-in-one tool, and to simulate the individual's mental processes by using a personalized infrastructure (online/off-line). Such a solution eliminates the aforementioned shortcomings, thereby distinguishing it from the state-of-the-art, which requires combining several software in order to achieve the same output. The authors believe that their approach is beyond the state-of-the-art, because the educational content and processes are isomorphically connected with the technology by the associated virtual-human knowledge, and the WPad works as a black box. The paper describes the key milestones of their research and the current focus of their research. This is aimed at creating a combined infrastructure using clouds, virtual machines and off-line computers, and testing the transfer of knowledge for educational and collaborative applications within the V4+ACARDC project.

A design of the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) represents a big challenge from an informatics point of view. In general, any computer support of teaching requires existing didactic algorithms for design of the informatics algorithms and writing programming codes. In comparison with technical processes, which are well-standardized, due to the complexity of teaching processes, such algorithms are missing. Moreover, the computer support of collaborative activities requires using the virtual spaces of servers, networks and clouds. Additionally, the lifetime of software and hardware is too short for supporting long-life learning. Contextually, a complex, didactic-technology approach is not researched enough within the fields such as technology-enhanced learning (TEL) or educational technology. This paper presents the authors' didactic-informatics approach related to these challenges. It is based on developing the in-house education-specific software, knowledge representation, personalized IT infrastructure, and a specific way of solving the knowledge transmission between off-line and online environments to support collaborative activities of teachers and researchers. This complex personalized approach seems to be beyond the state-of-the-art (e.g., a utility model is used).

From the teaching processes computerization point of view, there is an absence of state-of-the-art approaches to their automation derived from “knowledge” as the key element of teaching and learning (including human knowledge transmission taking place in the framework of communication and feedback). This contribution presents such an approach, dealing with how the automation is solved when computerizing teaching processes. It has been developed within the published long-term research on the technology-enhanced learning and works in the teaching practice (it is applied to teaching bachelors students). The approach is based on the design of the “virtual knowledge unit”, as the default data structure, which is both human and machine readable. This enables the teacher not only to process learning content but also to automate communication and feedback thanks to the possibility to transmit the knowledge, i.e. the teaching and learning content, between off-line and online environments by using the virtual knowledge unit. The virtual knowledge joins isomorphically the mental processes of humans with the physical processes of machines. From the practical point of view, the data structure is handled and controlled by the inhouse software BIKEE. This database application enables a teacher to solve any kind of teaching and learning processes tailor made for him. Based on the teaching practice, this approach seems to be beyond the state-of-the-art. This can be concluded because a registered utility model, based on the use of virtual knowledge, is used for the knowledge transfer. Some aspects of teaching processes computerization are discussed regarding the automation of mental processes. In this context, the actual research is focused on development of an educational robot. Keywords—automation of teaching processes; knowledge representation; technology-enhanced learning; educational technology; Cybernetics