Session T1J

A BDI-based Intelligent Tutoring Module for the eLearning Platform INES

Fernando A. Mikic-Fonte, Juan C. Burguillo-Rial, Martn Llamas-Nistal, and David Fernndez-Hermida
University of Vigo, mikic@det.uvigo.es, jrial@det.uvigo.es, martin@det.uvigo.es, davidfh@enigma.det.uvigo.es
Abstract - INES (INtelligent Educational System) is an
operative prototype of an e-learning platform, which
counts with functionalities of Learning Management
Systems, Learning Content Management Systems, and
Intelligent Tutoring Systems. To achieve these
functionalities, our system includes several tools and
technologies, such as: i) semantic management of users
and contents; ii) an conversational agent to communicate
with students in natural language; iii) BDI-based
(Believes, Desires, Intentions) agents, which shape the
tutoring module of the system; iv) an inference engine;
and v) ontologies, to semantically model the users, their
activities, and the learning contents.
At the present paper we will address the intelligent
tutoring module, and more specifically, its BDI-based
agents. Briefly, the tasks of these agents are to recognize
each student (checking his/her system credentials) and to
obtain information about his/her learning progress. So, it
can be able to suggest to each one specific tasks to
achieve his/her particular learning objectives. The
student himself/herself will decide if he/she accepts these
tasks or ask for other ones. These new requested tasks
can be delivered or not by the intelligent tutoring
module, taking into account its decisions, which are
based in several parameters related to the existing
learning paths and the students profile.
Index Terms BDI, e-Learning platforms, Intelligent tutors.
INTRODUCTION
INES (INtelligent Educational System) is a functional
prototype of an online learning platform, which combines
essential capabilities related to e-learning activities. These
capabilities are those concerning to Learning Management
Systems (LMS) [1], Learning Content Management Systems
(LCMS) [2], and Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) [3].
An LMS is a software application installed in a server,
which is used to administer, distribute, and supervise the
educational activities of an organization or institution. Its
main functions are to manage users, resources, and
educational materials and activities, to control the access, to
supervise the learning process and progress, to make
evaluations, etc. An LMS often does not include authoring
capabilities (to develop its own contents), which are carried
out by an LCMS.
An LCMS is used to create and manage the content of a
part of an educational program (for example a course),

which may be used, managed, and personalized in different

ways (for example in different courses).
At last, an ITS is an educational support system (a kind
of virtual tutor), used to help learners in their tasks and to
provide them with specific and adapted learning contents.
To carry out all this functionalities, our system, as a
whole, comprises a set of different tools and technologies, as
follows: semantic managing users (administrators, teachers,
and students) and contents tools, an intelligent chatterbot
which is able to communicate with students in natural
language [4], an intelligent agent based on BDI (Believes,
Desires, Intentions) technology [5] that acts as the brain of
the system, an inference engine based on JESS (a rule engine
for the Java platform) [6] and an ontology (to model the
user, his/her activities, and the learning contents) [7] that
contribute with the semantics of the system.
At the present paper we will focus on the intelligent
tutoring module. Because of it, the system is able to specify
for each student what to learn and how to do that, offering
personalized formation without human intervention.
This paper is organized as follows: In the first section
we will briefly present the BDI agents and how they work.
In the second section, we will address our e-learning
platform INES, and their characteristics as LMS, LCMS, and
ITS. The next section will be dedicated to explain how the
intelligent tutoring module works. At last, we will finish
with some conclusions.
BDI AGENTS
The specification, design, verification, and application of the
BDI agents has been in the spotlight throughout last years.
These agents are systems that work in a changing
environment, receiving information continually. Besides,
these agents have to carry out actions, which can affect the
environment, based on their internal (mental) state.
The intelligent agent model is a paradigm inspired by
the notion of rational agents based in mental attitudes.
Specifically, the BDI model (based on the mental processes
of Beliefs, Desires, and Intentions) shows up as a
philosophical model for the modeling of the human rational
behavior. Later, nevertheless, it was adopted and converted
in a model of execution for software agents based on the
notion of beliefs, goals, and plans (concepts which
can be created and manipulated by agents) [8].
At the beginning of the decade of 1990, Rao and
Georgeff designed a framework in which the notions of
beliefs, desires, and intentions were the central part. In

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Session T1J
concrete, they designed both a logic system where these
concepts were included and an architecture for the execution
of BDI based programs [9].
Beliefs are related to everything that the agent knows
(both related to the environment and to its internal state) and
will be stored in the belief base of the agent. Goals allow
describing what the agent must to achieve, but they do not
include information about the actions the agents must
exactly carry out to do that. Finally, plans are composed by a
set of instructions which allow the agent to carry out several
actions to try achieving the previously set goals. That is, if
the current situation (that the agent knows) is not the desired
one (i.e. the situation specified by the goals) then the agent
will execute the plan or plans to achieve this desired
situation. The relation between goals and plans will be
carried out by a reasoning engine, which will decide what
plan will be executed to try satisfying a specific goal.
The use of the words to try is not casual, because the
achievement of the goal is not guaranteed. This is so because
the BDI agent is designed to reason under certain conditions,
which can change while the plan is being executed (or while
the reasoning engine is taking a decision). Taking this in
account, it is not out of mind to find alternative plans.
This representation of the behavior using mental notions
has several benefits, such as to avoid the low level
abstraction (because only specific goals to achieve and
several plans to do that are presented) and easily understand
the autonomous behavior of the agent (even its prediction).
I. BDI platforms
Inspired by the design of Rao and Georgeff, several
programming platforms have been arisen. Jadex [10] and
JACK [11] can be considered as two of the most important
ones.
The Jadex project is been developed by the Distributed
Systems and Information Systems group of the University of
Hamburg, and it is distributed under GNU LGPL [12]
license. Nowadays it has several tools which can be grouped
in three sets:

A Java [13] API and a set of predefined functionalities

to do the agents programming becomes easy.
A platform which allows the execution of these agents
(reasoning engine).
A set of tools to use in execution time which allow
managing and monitoring different aspects of these
agents.

Agents implemented in Jadex are known as Goal

Oriented Agents. This paradigm allows including an
abstraction level to the definition of the behavior of the
agent, and so the developer can specify some goals to be
achieved by the agent, without saying how to do it. Now the
agent itself has certain degree of freedom to decide the more
appropriate form to achieve those goals.

JACK Intelligent Agents allows creating, executing, and

integrating commercial multi-agents systems based on Java.
It includes three main extensions of Java:

A set of syntactic extensions of the language.

A compiler which converts those syntactic extensions of
Java classes.
A set of classes (kernel) to allow supporting for code
execution.

The main objectives of JACK are: i) to offer a robust,

stable, and light product; ii) to satisfy a wide variety of
practical needs; and iii) to facilitate the transfers between the
developers and the industry (developing agents that can be
components of a bigger system).
E-LEARNING PLATFORM: INES
INES is a functional prototype of an online learning
platform, which combines capabilities concerning to LMSs,
LCMSs, and ITSs. That is to say, INES is able to carry out
specific tasks concerning to these three types of systems,
such as:

Management of students, administrators, resources,

activities, access, evaluations, etc.
Creation, management, and distribution of educational
contents.
Tutoring, helping, and guiding the student.

The main parts of INES can be grouped into several

blocks (Figure 1):

Ontology [14]: There is an ontology divided into three

sub-ontologies: i) one to semantically define the
contents of the courses (learning objects), which is
based on LOM [15]; ii) another one, based on IMS LIP
[16], to model users data; and iii) the last one to define
relations among users and learning contents.
Contents and users managing module: This module
allows administrators to manage both the users of the
system and the contents of the courses. Besides, it
allows the BDI agent and the inference engine gain
access to the ontology.
Inference engine: It processes the requests of the BDI
agent and decides what will be allowed to do and what
not.
BDI agent: The actual brain of the system. It is based on
BDI technology, and it is responsible of taking
personalized decisions about the learning of every
student in an intelligent manner (see next Intelligent
Tutoring Module section for more details).
Chatterbot: Responsible for the communication with the
students [17] (based on [18]).

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Sessiion T1J
control the participattion of the sttudents, and tto evaluate
them.
LCMS
II. Funcctionalities as L
An LCM
MS is used to ddesign, create, and manage thhe contents
of a learrning program
m (usually, conttents belong to courses).
As an LCMS, INE
ES provides fuunctionalities such as:

Eassy manner off creating andd managing ccontent, so

expperts in the maatter to teach ccan carry out tthese tasks
witth a minimum
m effort (evenn if they do not have
expperience with ttechnology).
Sevveral types off learning matterial can be uused (from
sim
mple text to richh multimedia ccontents).
Conntents are storeed in a repositoory.
Leaarning contentts can be reuseed and exporteed (even to
diff
fferent systemss because the rresearch of a L
LOM-based
onttology).

So, funnctionalities reelated to an L

LCMS and ann LMS are
combinned to carry out a compleete managemeent of the
learningg, from the ppoint of view of the users (students,
teacherss, and administtrators) and thee contents.
III. Funnctionalities as ITS

FIGURE 1
BLOCK DIAG
GRAM OF INES.

II. Functionalitiies as LMS

A
An LMS can be
b defined as a software application based on
IInternet, used to
t design, implement, and ev
valuate a speciific
learning processs, that is to say, it includees all the need
ded
sservices for the
t
correct online
o
managing of learning
aactivities. In particular, it
i tries to offer managing
ffunctionalities to the userrs of the platform:
p
systtem
aadministrators, teachers, and students.
s
The services an LMS off
ffers may be diifferent according
too the platform
ms, and in ou
ur case, INES
S offers amon
ngst
oothers:

Administraation
and
managementt
(registratio
on, directory
y of userss,
qualificatio
ons, etc.).
Distributio
on of contents.
Collaborative work tools.
Control an
nd assessment of
o users.
Design of personalized
p
leearning plans.

of
courrses
consult of

In short, our
o platform offers
o
to the instructors,
i
as an
L
LMS, function
nalities to distribute learniing contents, to

ITSs arre educational computer systeems able to sppecify what

to teachh and how to do that, i.e. thhey are a kindd of virtual
intelligeent tutors bassed on knowlledge, which guide the
studentss in their learnning process, trrying to emulatte a human
tutor.
In this sense, INES makes inferences over the
knowleddge a student hhas about certaain topics or tasks, and so
it offerss him/her suitaable learning ccontent. Besiddes, it is in
charge to do a persoonalized assesssment over eaach student
and, takking this intoo account, it ccan recommennd specific
learningg tasks to him/hher.
INTELLIG
GENT TUTORIN
NG MODULE
ISMAE
EL is a BDI aggent which actts as the real bbrain of the
intelligeent tutoring m
module of the system. In shorrt, its tasks
are: i) too recognize eaach student, cheecking his/her credentials
when hhe/she tries to log into the ssystem; and ii)) to obtain
informaation related too his/her educattional progresss, and so to
suggestt him/her perssonalized taskss to achieve aan specific
learningg goal. The student himsself/herself, thhrough the
interacttion with ISMA
AEL, will decidde if he/she accepts these
suggestted tasks or rrequests for other ones. T
These new
requesteed tasks may be offered byy ISMAEL o nnot (it will
must too take a deciision), accordiing to some pparameters
related tto the learningg paths and the students profi
file.
Thiis tutoring m
module will ruun on a Jadexx platform
(which,, as we could ssee before, offe
fers functionalities for the
manageement of BDI aagents). All ovver the system is running,
the Jadeex platform is bbeen executed. So, every tim
me a student
log intoo the system too do his/her leearning tasks, aan instance
of ISMA
AEL will be crreated. This innstance will be the virtual
tutor off that specific sstudent.

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Sessiion T1J
uld see beforee, the commun
nication with the
As we cou
sstudents is carrry out by a chaatterbot (CHAR
RLIE CHAttteR
L
Learning Interrface Entity), which acts as an interfa
face
bbetween a student and th
he system. More
M
concreteely,
C
CHARLIE wiill communicaate with a messenger
m
ag
gent
((EMMA Events and Messsages Manageer Agent), wh
hich
w
will be the interrmediary between it and ISM
MAEL (Figure 2).
2
II. EMMA Agent
T
The objective of
o this agent iss acting as a kind
k
of messenger
oor intermediary
y between the chatterbot an
nd the BDI ag
gent
IISMAEL. It is
i in charge of managing the events and
a
m
messages that can arise betw
ween them (thiis agent has beeen
im
mplemented ass a BDI agent too).
t
When the system
s
start up
p, an instance of
o EMMA willl be
ccreated, which will be runnin
ng waiting conn
nections from the
cchatterbot. Wh
hen a connectiion arises, it will
w be created
d a
thhread which will be in ch
harge of readiing the receiv
ved
m
messages. If a login messag
ge is received
d, then a stud
dent
w
wants to log in
nto the system
m, and so this messenger ag
gent
w
will launch an
n instance of ISMAEL (ob
bviously, when
n a
sstudent log offf the system, th
he messenger agent
a
will destrroy
thhe correspondiing instance off ISMAEL prev
viously created
d).
When the connection between the ch
hatterbot and the
nnew instance of
o ISMAEL is on, EMMA
A will format the
m
messages from
m the first one to
t a format thaat the second one
o
ccan understand
d, and then it will
w send these messages to this
t
laast one. Likew
wise, when IS
SMAEL wants to communiccate
w
with the chattterbot, the inv
verse process will take plaace
((Figure 2).

sevveral learning objects. Thesse relations wiill make a

learrning path, whhich the studennt will must fo
follow (this
patth, obviously, will not have to be linear, but in our
proototype it will have a structuure divided intto courses,
moodules, and uniits). The main objective will be that the
studdent achieves certain kind off competenciess related to
thee taught matteer. To do thiss, this objectivve will be
divvided into otheers sub-objectives of low levvel, and so
on,, recursively. So, when thhese sub-objeectives are
achhieved, then thhe high level oones will be acchieved too
(annd so on until aachieving the m
main initial objeective).
Inteentions: Thesee intentions are the plans the aagent owns
to ttry the student reaches the seet out goals. Soo, the agent
willl execute a series of planns (actions) ttaking into
acccount at every time the belieffs which it hass, the goals
to aachieve at this moment, and the messages tthat can be
recceived from thee student. Besides, a series oof plans to
do routine tasks are included, ssuch as: tasks to process
meessages (both the received oones and the desired to
sennd), tasks, to m
manage the tempporization, etc.

II
II. ISMAEL Ageent
IISMAEL is an
a agent whiich running under
u
the Jad
dex
pplatform, and so it is defineed by a XML file called ADF
((Agent Definitiion File) and a set of Java classes which will
w
eexecute its plaans. As we haave told beforee, the objectivee of
thhis agent is to
o guide the stu
udent through
h several learning
taasks, commun
nicating with him/her
h
throug
gh the chatterb
bot
((and the messen
nger agent).
Following,, we will brieefly present so
ome of its more
im
mportant BDI characteristicss:

Beliefs: Th
hey will be maainly compound
ded by a seriess of
references to: instances to
t access the ontology
o
modu
ule,
instance of the messeng
ger agent to co
ommunicate with
w
the chatterrbot, identifierr of the studeent who is being
tutorized, identifiers of the tasks the student is doiing,
temporizattions, etc. In short,
s
they aree a whole set of
parameterss (information
n) the agentt need to taake
decisions related to th
he goals to achieve
a
at every
moment, and
a the actions which will be carried out to try
reach thosee goals.
Desires: They are the go
oals. They con
nsist of managing
to do the student
s
does a series of educcational activitiies,
which hav
ve previously defined by a teacher of the
platform. Usually
U
these activities will be included in
na
semantic schema
s
which
h defines the relations amo
ong

FIGURE 2
W ORKING SCHEMA
A OF CHARLIE, E
EMMA, AND ISMA
AEL

At last, only to ppoint out the exxistence of tim

mers, which
will be used to detecct the presencee of a student,, when the
system detects inacttivity periods. There are tw
wo mainly
reasons to check this ssituation:

To detect if the user left the system: If thee period of

inaactivity is conssiderable (it exxceeds certain limits) the
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Sessiion T1J

system willl assume that the student haas left his/her taask
without a communication about it. So, the system will
w
proceed to shutdown the session of thiss student (to saave
resources)..
To monito
or the time thatt the students spend with every
educationaal task: The semantic
s
know
wledge about the
learning ob
bjects includess information about the time a
student wo
ould spend wiith them. So, the actual sp
pent
time to fin
nish a task is really
r
importan
nt to know if this
t
expected tiime is properly
y set. Besides, the spent time by
a student to
o do his/her taasks is valuablee data to take in
nto
account in his/her learnin
ng profile.

II
III. Flow Diagrram of the Intelligent Tutoring Module
N
Now we are go
oing to briefly
y comment thee behavior of this
t
m
module when the student is already doing
g a learning taask
((Figure 3):

If tthe chatterbot nneeds to send tthe message (because this

meessage is aboutt the user has finished his/hher task or
beccause the user requests someething from thhe system),
CH
HARLIE sendss it to EMM
MA (in other case, the
chaatterbot itself w
will answer thee student).
EM
MMA formats the messagee before sendding it to
ISM
MAEL (so this one can underrstand it).
ISM
MAEL checks if the user hhas finished hiis/her task,
achhieving the assiigned goal.
If tthe user finishhed his/her tassk: i) the systeem will be
upggraded (beliefss and ontology)); ii) the next ggoal will be
seleected; iii) the plans to achieeve this new gooal will be
lauunched; and ivv) the user willl be informed about this
(thrrough EMMA and CHARLIE
E).
If the user did not finish hhis/her task, tthe system
proocesses the reqquest of the useer and: i) if thee request is
rejeected, the systtem sends to the user an aappropriate
meessage about itt; or ii) if the request is acccepted, the
sysstem is upgradeed.

At last, we must point out that the selection oof the next
goal too achieve is a process whhich implies ttaking into
accountt both the learrning path andd the current ssituation of
the studdent related to his/her learninng tasks (ISMA
AEL is able
to accesss this knowleedge through tthe semantic innformation
stored iin the ontologyy of the system
m). For examplle, the next
selectedd goal could bee one of the folllows:

To do the next taask of the studdents learningg path (this

learrning path has been previoussly defined by the teacher
whho created the ccourse the studdent is carry outt).
To recommend to the studennt a review oof specific
conntent which hhe/she has alrready seen beefore (this
reccommendation could be baseed on the resullts of a test
whhich he/she hadd done to evaluate his/her kknowledge,
or on the amoun
unt of time thhat has passedd from the
studdent see the coontent, etc.).
To show the sttudent additioonal educationnal content
(eitther for a studdents request or for a decission of the
sysstem).
Etcc.
CONCLUSION
NS

FIGURE 3
AGRAM OF THE INTELLIGENT TUTORIING MODULE.
FLOW DIA

The maain contributionn of this paperr is the presenntation of a

functionnal prototype of an intellligent learningg platform
(called INES), which includes capaabilities relatedd to LMSs,
LCMSss, and ITSs, ssuch as: manaagement of coontents and
users, aand recommenddation of specific and suitabble learning
tasks too the students. More specificcally, we havee addressed
the inteelligent tutoringg module of IN
NES, and its B
BDI agents:
i) ISMA
AEL, which acts as the actuall brain of the ssystem, and
whose ttasks are to reccognize every student, checkking his/her
credentiials when he/sshe log into thhe system, andd to obtain
informaation related too his/her educattional progresss to suggest

When the user sends a message to the

t chatterbot, it
processes it
i to know if itt needs to send
d this messagee to
the BDI agent, or if it is
i able (throug
gh its knowled
dge
base) to an
nswer the studeent by itself.
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Session T1J
him/her personalized tasks to achieve an specific learning
goal; and ii) EMMA, which acts as a messenger between
ISMAEL and a conversational agent to communicate with
the students.

[17] Mikic, F. A., Burguillo, J. C., Llamas, M., Rodrguez, D. A.,

Rodrguez, E., CHARLIE: An AIML-based chatterbot which works
as an interface among INES and humans, 20th European Association
for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering - EAEEIE
2009 (Valencia, Spain), 2009.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

[18] Mikic, F. A., Burguillo, J. C., Llamas M., TQ-Bot: An AIML-based

Tutor and Evaluator Bot, Journal of Universal Computer Science
(JUCS), Verlag der Technischen Universitt Graz, Austria, 15, 7,
2010, 1486-1495.

This work has been funded by Universidade de Vigo, under

program contract 08VIA08, and Xunta de Galicia, under
grant INCITE09E2R322090ES.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Fernando A. Mikic Fonte received the M.Sc. degree in
Engineering in 2001 from the University of Vigo, Spain. He
is a Ph.D. candidate in Information Technologies at the
University of Vigo, Spain. He is currently an assistant
professor at the Department of Telematic Engineering at the
same university. His research interests include intelligent
agents, distributed artificial intelligence, e-learning, and
telematics services. mikic@det.uvigo.es
Juan C. Burguillo Rial received the M.Sc. degree in 1995
and the Ph.D. degree (cum laude) in 2001 from the
University of Vigo, Spain; both in Telecommunication
Engineering. He has been assistant professor during the
period 1996-2001 at the ETSI of Telecommunications
(Higher Technical School of Telecommunications
Engineering) in the University of Vigo, Spain. He is
currently an associate professor at the Department of
Telematic Engineering at the same university. His research
interests include intelligent agents, distributed artificial
intelligence, distributed optimization, and telematic services.
jrial@det.uvigo.es
Martn Llamas Nistal received the Telecommunications
Engineer degree (1986) and Doctor in Telecommunications
degree (1994), both from the Technical University of
Madrid, Spain. Since 1987 he has been lecturing at the ETSI
of Telecommunications (Higher Technical School of
Telecommunications Engineering) of the University of Vigo,
Spain (where he was assistant head during the period 19941997). He is currently an associate professor of the
Department of Telematic Engineering at the same university.
His areas of interest are protocol engineering, e-learning,
web engineering, and Internet based applications. Since
December 1998 to October 2003 he has been the Head of
ICT Area at the University of Vigo, Spain. He is a senior
member of the IEEE. martin@det.uvigo.es
David Fernndez Hermida is a M.Sc. degree candidate in
Engineering at University of Vigo, Spain. He is currently a
full-time researcher at the Department of Telematic
Engineering at the same university. His research interests
include intelligent agents, distributed artificial intelligence,
and e-learning. davidfh@gist.det.uvigo.es

978-1-4244-6262-9/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

October 27 - 30, 2010, Washington, DC
40th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T1J-6