Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Interactive Pathway Design for Learning through Agent and Library Augmented Shared Knowledge Areas (ALASKA) Eric Hamilton US Air Force Academy

Abstract

This paper outlines a recently funded NSF-funded effort to integrate three learning technologies (perceptual agents; collaborative workspaces; and digital libraries). Each has emerged and matured over the past decade and each has presented compelling and oftentimes moving opportunities to alter educational practice and to render learning more effective. The project seeks a novel way to blend these technologies and to create and test a new model for human- machine partnership in learning settings. The innovation we are prototyping in this project creates an applet-rich shared space whereby a pedagogical agent at each learner’s station functions as an instructional assistant to the teacher or professor and tutor to the student. The platform is intended to open a series of new -- and instructionally potent -- interactive pathways.

Introduction

Three different learning technologies and an intriguing opportunity to integrate them are at the heart of an educational research effort funded by the US National Science Foundation [1]. Each in its own right is at the forefront of a particular research domain. Each has emerged and matured over the past decade; and each has presented compelling and oftentimes moving opportunities to alter educational practice and to render learning more effective. This research project seeks a novel way to blend these technologies and to create and test a new model for human-machine partnership in learning settings.

The three learning technologies this project integrates are perceptive animated agents (an emerging class of intelligent, virtual tutors with life-like affective features); shared collaborative workspaces that enable users in a learning environment to remotely view and modify the displays of others; and digital libraries of small programs or applets that can illustrate, describe or provide visualizations of curriculum concepts. In each of these, the project relies on a steady pace of IT developments that have led to their most advanced current forms, and also on relevant human factors research. The innovation we are prototyping in this project creates an applet-rich shared space whereby a perceptive animated agent at each learner’s station functions as an instructional assistant to the teacher or professor and tutor to the student. The platform is intended to open a series of new -- and instructionally potent -- interactive pathways.

With this platform, each student interacts with his or her personal agent in solving problems or acquiring new curricular concepts; the teacher can direct the agents; and all of the participants (teacher, students and agents) have immediate access to the curriculum-tailored library of applets

Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Hamilton, E. (2005, June), Expanding Computer Science Learning With Agent And Library Augmented Shared Knowledge Areas (Alaska) Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15062