Ram, A. & Leake, D. (1995). Learning, Goals, and Learning Goals. In Goal-Driven Learning. by A. Ram & D. Leake, (eds) Chapter 1. MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, MA.

@InBook{,
  ALTauthor = 	 {Ashwin Ram, David Leake},
  ALTeditor = 	 {Ashwin Ram, David Leake},
  title = 	 {Goal-Driven Learning},
  chapter = 	 {1: Learning, Goals, and Learning Goals},
  publisher = 	 {MIT Press/Bradford Books},
  year = 	 {1995},
  OPTpages = 	 {1--43},
}

Author of the summary: Alexander Stoytchev, 2000, saho@cc.gatech.edu

Cite this paper for:

The central idea underlying goal-driven Learning is that the 
learning process should be guided by reasoning about the information that
is needed to serve the goals of the agent.  After all the value of learning
depends on how well the learning contributes to achieving the learner's
goals. Also, the utility of a piece of knowledge can be best evaluated
relative to a given task or goal.  

The motivation for the goal-driven approach is to control processing in a
rich world. Goal driven learning can be especially useful in focusing the
learner's efforts. Goals determine how much time and effort to allocate to
performance tasks, indirectly influencing the resources
available for the learning that will be performed as a part of that task. 

Table 1 on p4. Gives more ways in which goals can influence the learning
in terms of: performance task, learning task, and storage.


A Framework for goal-driven learning
====================================

The key idea behind this framework is to model learning as an active
(explicitly goal-driven) and strategic(rational and deliberative) process
in which a reasoner explicitly defines its goals in learning and attempts
to learn by determining and pursuing appropriate learning actions via
explicit reasoning about its goals, its abilities, and environmental
opportunities.


Goal-driven learning can be modeled as a two-step process;

  Step 1. Generation of learning Goals
            based on the performance task and the task goals

  Step 2. Pursuit of learning goals
            based on the needs of the reasoner, and environment factors
            that determine the importance of pursuing certain learning
            actions in a given situation.


As part of Step 1 some attention is paid to learning failures.
there are several kinds of failures: 
    - expectation failure
    - retrieval failure
    - knowledge application failure

Failures can give rise to some new learning goals like:

 * need to acquire additional knowledge
 * need to modify the underlying representational vocabulary





The goal driven framework serves to provide an integrative structure into
which individual research efforts fit as pieces of the puzzle of
goal-driven learning. In chapter 5, five major issues that need to be
addressed are stated

  * What is a goal?
  * What are the types of goals?
  * How do goals influence processing and learning?
  * What are the functional and pragmatic implications of goal-driven
     learning for the reasoner?
  * What are the pragmatic implications of goal-driven
     learning as a cognitive model?

The  rest of the paper elaborates on these points. Mostly it cites
existing work and casts it into the goal-driven framework. Therefore, it
is hard to summarize.

Summary author's notes:

• There is a shorter version of this paper which can be used as a detailed summary: A Framework for Goal-Driven Learning, Ashwin Ram, David Leake. AAAI Spring Symposium on Goal-Driven Learning, Stanford, CA, 1994. Full version in A. Ram & D. Leake, editors, Goal-Driven Learning,.

  http://www.cc.gatech.edu/faculty/ashwin/papers/er-94-02.ps.Z.