"Dr. Leonid Perlovsky is Principal Research Physicist and Technical Advisor at the AF Research Lab and Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. He leads research projects on mathematical models of the mind, cognitive algorithms, language, and cultural evolution. As Chief Scientist at Nichols Research, a $500mm high-tech organization, he led the corporate research in intelligent systems. He served as professor at Novosibirsk Engineering Institute and New York University; as a principal in commercial startups developing tools for biotechnology and financial predictions. His company predicted the market crash following 9/11 a week before the event, detecting ripples from Al Qaeda trades and later helped SEC looking for perpetrators. He is invited as a keynote speaker worldwide, including most prestigious venues such as the Nobel Forum; published more than 465 publications, 4 books in Oxford and Springer, received 2 patents. Dr. Perlovsky participates in organizing conferences on Computational Intelligence, serves as Chair for the IEEE Boston Computational Intelligence Chapter; Chair for the IEEE Task Force on The Mind and Brain, on the International Neural Network Society (INNS) Board of Governors as Chair of The Award Committee. He serves on the Editorial Board of ten professional journals, has founded and serves as Editor-in-Chief for “Physics of Life Reviews,” (IF=7.2, ranked #4 in the world among 82 biophysics journals by Thomson Reuters). He received National and International awards including the Gabor Award; and the John McLucas Award, the highest US Air Force Award for basic research.
 
Dr. T. Grandon Gill is a professor of Information Systems & Decision Sciences and the Academic Director of the new Doctor of Business Administration program at the Muma College of Business of the University of South Florida. His MBA and DBA degrees are from Harvard Business School. He is a leading researcher in the transdisciplinary field of informing science, and is Editor-in-Chief of Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline. He is internationally known for his research in the development and use of case studies and is currently working on a grant with the National Science Foundation to develop discussion case studies relating to cybersecurity. His principal research areas are the impacts of complexity on decision-making and IS education, and he has published many articles describing how technologies and innovative pedagogies can be combined to increase the effectiveness of teaching across a broad range of IS topics. His most recent book, Informing Business: Research and Education on a Rugged Landscape, deals with how we might better align business academia with the complexity of business practice. Professor T. Grandon Gill has also extensive experience in case method research, as well as in writing cases for classroom use and facilitating case discussions. His MBA and DBA are both from Harvard Business School, where the case method originated. He is author of the book Informing with the Case Method (2011, Informing Science Press) and recently became the founding editor of Journal of Information Technology Education: Discussion Cases, a publication outlet for case studies in the MIS, IT and informing science fields.
 
Dr Jeremy Horne is President-emeritus of the Southwest Area Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: AAAS. He currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Inventors Assistance League, a non-profit organization  dedicated to helping independent inventors bring their creations to fruition.   He resides in San Felipe, Baja, California (Mexico) doing research and writing in the areas of Logic as the language of innate order in the universe, which is an ongoing 40 year project.
 
Dr Horne taught many courses in political science and technology, delivered many presentations on the philosophy of scientific methods for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Quantum Mind conferences, has been reviewer for various journals about the structure and process in binary space, consciousness studies, systems, theory, and philosophy of science, and Documentation Systems Developer, for White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. His most recent publication consists of two chapters on the philosophy of binary logic and artificial minds in Research and Applications in Global Supercomputing, released by IGI Global Press March 2015.
 
Dr. Horne is member of several professional organizations such as The American Association for the Advancement of Science, (AAAS, the World’s largest general scientific society) where he was President of its Southwest Area Division; Bioelectromagnetics Society;  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers where he is a voting member of Fiber Optic Technical Advisory Group.
 
Dr. Jeremy Horne earned his Ph. D. in Philosophy at University of Florida, Gainesville; His Master of Science in Political Science at New Haven, CT, and his Bachelor in Art in International Relation at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, He has been a member of the Phi Kappa Phi, National Academic Honor Society, and his name was included in several Who's Who directories.

Dr. Risa Blair has extensive experience in higher education, preparatory education, and online education. She most recently worked for Blackboard Collaborate where she was responsible for working with customers and Collaborate teams to implement project plans. Previously, she worked at FedEx Latin America Caribbean Division as a Training Advisor responsible for delivering training, designing online training, and optimizing the use of technology to produce results. Previously she worked as a Senior Instructional Designer for the Virtual College at Miami Dade College where she coordinated and trained faculty in the course development process. She additionally teaches for Grantham University, as well as Kaplan University. She has a strong background in technology and communications, business and management, instructional design, and online and traditional teaching. Dr. Blair is past president of Florida Distance Learning Association, the Florida affiliate of the United States Distance Learning Association. Dr. Blair spent a semester in the Middle East as an assistant professor using state-of-the art telecommunication resources for her students to interact around the globe and learn in engaging online environments. Her areas of research include studying mobile technology, millennials’ use of technology, differences in the generations, and utilizing Web 2.0 tools to promote engagement in online courses.

Dr. Nagib Callaos is the founding president of the IIIS and the founding president of the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI). He is former Dean of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar and was the founding president of several organizations on research, development, and technological innovation, e.g. The Foundation of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar, the founding president of the Venezuelan Fund for Technological Innovations (created by presidential decree), The founding president of the Venezuelan Association of Executives in Patents and Copyrights, etc. His main research and professional activities were in the area of systemic Methodologies of Information System Development, Group Decision Support Systems, and Action-Research mainly via Operations Research. He tutored more than 100 undergraduate and graduate theses and produced more than 100 research papers and reflection articles."

“Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” Albert Einstein [1]
 
“But education, in the true sense, is not mere instruction…It is unfolding the whole human nature. It is growing up in all things to our highest possibility” J. F. Clarke [2]
 
“By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man-body, mind and spirit. Literacy is not the end of education or even the beginning.” Mahatma Gandhi [3]
 
The purpose of conversational is to differentiate between the notions of Education and Instruction, especially in the context of Higher Education, and to identify the kind of relationships that would make more effective the implementation of both of them.
 
To confuse the meanings of these terms or what concepts and uses are involved in their respective notions might be the source of intellectual confusion, unintentional misleading, and, hence, of pragmatic ineffectiveness, especially with regards to educational processes. Our hope is to continue reflecting and researching on this issue and, potentially, generate reflections and research from teachers and professors specifically regarding what is (and/or what should be) the meaning of Higher Education, and its differences with what we might call Higher Instruction. An increasing number of scholars (consciously or unconsciously) perceive or conceive some universities as institutions of Higher Instruction rather than Higher Education.
 
In the opinion of some of the panelist, there is an increasing confusion among the terms of “education” and “instruction” and sometimes they are used almost as synonyms. Both terms are much related, but they do not mean the same ideas or concepts. Let us the metaphor of “color” and “surface”, we know that both are completely different concepts though very related to each other. There is no color that is not seen on a surface and no empirical surface with no color on it, but to confuse the notions of “color” and “surface” might take us to a non-sense confusion between “Optics” with Geometry”. “Color” and “surface” should be differentiated as concepts or notions in order to understand the reality in which both of them co-exist together. [4]
 
To do so, we will not try to conceptually define “education” and “instruction.” This is not the place to do it, nor is it our intention. Furthermore, from a systemic perspective, as well as from a post-modernist stand, definition of education should be done in the context of a culture and/or value system. Consequently, the definition should be done by the users of specific educational systems and processes. This is why we worked out in another article a meta-definition of “Education,” i.e. we defined a way of producing a definition of education by means of the corresponding users (students, parents, teachers, etc). Our purpose in this conversational session is 1) to share and collect important denotations and connotations of the notions of “Education” and “Instruction” with the objective to differentiate them in order to effectively relate them; and 2) to provide the attendees with the option to write, after the conference is over, an invited position of reflection paper which, if accepted, will be included in the post-conference volume of the conference proceedings with no additional cost for the respective author(s). Best papers will be selected for their publication in the journal with no additional cost either for their author(s).