Actively Supporting Collaboration in Virtual Learning Environments

Collaboration between peers is an important aspect of the learning process and can considerably augment learning in studying complex domains. To ensure that peer collaboration occurs within unfamiliar situations such as those provided by Virtual Learning Environments, support for collaborative activities needs to be offered to learners. This support can be provided using intelligent agents that actively support the formation of collaborative relationships and mediate collaboration between learners in Virtual Learning Environments. This paper describes intelligent agents developed to provide support for proctoring, a form of collaborative learning where learners adopt the role of tutor or tutee. This collaborative activity is described within the context of an environment constructed for the learning of Entity Relationship Modelling. The intelligent agents determine effective collaboration partners, based on the monitoring of learner behaviour and initiate the collaborative activity be...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: FLAIRS
• Authors: Adrian Gordon, Lynne E. Hall
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Collaborative, FLAIRS 2000, Intelligent Agents, Virtual Learning Environments