FROM CLASSROOM TEACHING TO E-LEARNING: THE WAY FOR A STRONG DEFINITION Amaral L., 1 Leal D. 1 1 Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal ABSTRACT In any process of adoption of e-learning is important to understand his elements and the way they interrelate. This work tries to achieve the e-Learning definition using a graphical interpretation supported by mathematical language that helps the understanding, step-by-step, of the transition from “Classroom Learning” to “e-Learning”. In the last step, the obtained graphic and formula is used in order to reach what we call the strong e-Learning definition. KEYWORDS e-Learning, e-Learning concepts. 1. INTRODUCTION To obtain the e-learning definition we use the following method: first we describe the classroom teaching and com base in this scenario, we make the necessary changes, in successive iterations, in order to achieve the e-Learning model. With this purpose we have created a set of graphical pictures supported by the mathematic translation illustrating the successive steps from the initial state “Classroom teaching” until the final state “e-Learning”. 2. STEP ONE: THE CLASSROOM MODEL The first step of our journey is to define the face-to-face teaching in a graphical form. Figure 1 shows the “entities” or “players” (Teacher, Content and Student) (Terry 2002) and the constrains (Place and Time) (Retalis, Makrakis et al. 1998) that as a whole represent the classroom teaching (CT): • The Teacher (T) • The Content (C) • The Student (S) • The Place (P) • The Time (W) Figure 1 – Classroom teaching The initial state (CT), Classroom Teaching, is translated to mathematical language thru this formula: W P S C T CT ! ! ! ! =