Agents Contribution for an Asynchronous Virtual Classroom

Kenji Matsuura, Hiroaki Ogata, and Yoneo Yano Faculty of Engineering, Tokushima University 2-1, Minamijosanjima, Tokushima 770-8506, Japan http://www-yano.is.tokushima-u.ac.jp/ (matsuura, ogata, yano)@is.tokushima-u.ac.jp

Abstract. This paper describes a new idea about the multi-agents that

act as classmates of learners in an asynchronous virtual classroom. The environment of this virtual classroom is designed to support asynchronous participants. Some agents in the system are based on learnermodel of the past learners, and others are on the educational strategy the teacher has given in advance. In such situation, it is necessary for a learner to filter classmates who are actually software agents in the user interface. Furthermore, the actions of these agents are also to be defined. Therefore, we propose two types of strategies to select well-fitted classmates first things in this paper. Then, we define these agents action in an agent-based asynchronous virtual classroom.

Introduction

It becomes more common for those who design a lifelong learning environment to realize it on computers and networks as the virtual school/classroom [2][6]. These movements make the ordinary learning environment, like classroom-based education in a school, extend to the virtual one via the Internet [3][4][5]. However those environments could have some problems that the system has to compel users to participate in at the same time [8]. Otherwise, if the system allows a user to participate in anytime, all the things she/he can do in that environment is to see static learning materials for the reason why she/he has no way to communicate with others synchronously. The problem is that it is awfully difficult for an asynchronous learner to communicate with others immediately when she/he wants to ask or to make comments on the learning materials in the classroom. For example, concerned with a supporting distance-lecture system, learners have to use the same learning materials at the same time, otherwise the system cannot provide the collaboration space among learners. On the other hand, the approaches to bind software agents to a learners environment as a companion have been seen recently [1].

G. Gauthier, C. Frasson, K. VanLehn (Eds.): ITS 2000, LNCS 1839, pp. 344-353, 2000. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000

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The main purpose of the researches to support distance learning is to study how the system provides a collaborative learning environment for learners or makes a learner acquire new knowledge and refine it on network [7]. The learning environments of some ordinary studies propose one-way communication in which the systems show a learner teaching materials. On the other hand, if the system provides a collaborative environment to learners, they have to participate in synchronously, or they may use asynchronous communication tools without any utilization of past learners action. Therefore, we have been developing AAVC (Agent-based Asynchronous Virtual Classroom) to solve those problems. AAVC system combines self-instruction with collaboration by agents. A learner in AAVC system uses networked computers to learn or communicate with remote learning resources, including teachers and other learners, but without the requirement to be online at the same time. In the concrete, AAVC has the efficiently visualized learning environment to support distance lecture that uses exposed video images of a teacher and some virtual learners. A learner in this system is able to see some classmates and their actions in the environment. Some of them are software agents of past lectured learners and the others are on behalf of prepared educational agents. In such situation, a learner feels much presence that she/he shares time and space with a teacher and other learners. A learner in this system may also collaborate with other learners or a teacher by using agent communication, while the other real learners don't participate in the same class at the same time. Hence this system links people as well as machines across the time and place. In this paper, we describe how to select these autonomous agents as classmates for a learner first of all. Then, we also define their action in our AAVC system.

Agent-Based Asynchronous Virtual Classroom

2.1 Features of AAVC It is important for those who learn in an asynchronous learning environment that the system provides a virtual community space for teaching and learning. The environment of AAVC has some comparable advantages shown as follows: (1) Anytime/Anywhere learning The system enables a learner to request the resources at anytime on WWW, if the classroom is opened to the public. Then the system sends its learning materials and additional information about the classroom on the educational strategy. The information are may be changed by means of the strategy every time a learner participates in AAVC. (2) Seamless Learning Other classrooms linked by the teacher are seen in an information space, and a learner may moves to other classroom at anytime. Due to the teacher's educational linking strategy, a learner can make his own knowledge amplify. (3) Learning by observing others' interaction Watching the interaction among other learners or between a learner and the teacher makes to construct effective discussing way for the learner and to be aware of

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various viewpoints. The system indicates other learners past action, especially their statements in the past discussion. (4) Learning through collaboration This system provides to learners a collaboration space with others. In such situation, a learner can refine his/her acquired knowledge through the discussion. The system prepares synchronous / asynchronous collaborative environments for the continuous discussion.

(a)
Synchronous Mode Teacher Learner A Learner B Learner C Learner D Focused Learner

(b)
Asynchronous Mode Absolute Time Flow

Reflection

NOW Video Time Refer Discussion Synchronous Discussion (with Learner D) Asynchronous Discussion (with Teacher, Learner A) Relative Time Flow

Fig. 1. Time Flow

2.2 Time flow Fig.1 shows the time flow in AAVC. At first, the lecture is recorded as the video image, which is made into MPEG or simply RA file. When the other teaching materials are ready for the class, the AAVC might be opened to the public on WWW. Then the system enables learners to request to participate in. As we focus on certain learner, she/he can see some agents of the other learners who have participated in at the past time, and some additional agents in the user interface. As the learning time goes on, she/he can also recognize the other learner D. At the beginning of a classroom, the system organizes the classmates, actually agents, who are divided two groups: past learners' agents and educational agents. When the learner D participates in the middle of the classroom, the system indicates the existence of learner D, without any interrupting the learners lecture.

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Agents Model

3.1 Types of Agents

Table 1. The types of agents in AAVC

Types My-agent Simu-agent

Whose Agent? Learner-self Other learner

Claque-agent Helper-agent

Teacher (as learner) Teacher

Each roles or explanations - Managing the learners individual knowledge - Managing the other learners individual knowledge - Imitating other learners past action - Carrying out an action plan of the claque learner that the teacher have given in advance - Managing shared knowledge - Answering the learners questions

Teacher

(4)Helper -Agent Organization /Answer /Comment

Social Knowledge

AAVC System

User Interface
Learning Materials

(3)Claque-Agent Question /Examination Action Negotiation/ Communication (2)Simu-Agent

Bs Knowledge

Question (1)My-Agent
As Knowledge

Learner A (Current)

Learner B (Past)

Fig. 2. Agents conceptual model

The kinds of software agents are shown in Table.1, whose conceptual model is illustrated with Fig.2. My-agent displays some action patterns according to the learner's operation, e.g., clicking a mouse or typing a keyboard. This agent plays a role that

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monitors the learners action and manages his/her individual knowledge. Simu-agent acts on the past-attended learner's model, which is constituted by the learner's action log. Simu-agent imitates the past learners actions and manages the learners individual knowledge. Claque -agent is a preset-typed educational agent that acts for the learner to give him/her some advice. Since these actions make a learner have his/her own opinion or want to ask some questions to others about shown statements, both actions may also induce collaboration with others. Helper-agent acts on the pedagogical strategy given by the teacher and answer the learners question. In those types of software agents, the number of claque-agents is adjusted by the system. Each agent has its own action model, implemented on the server-side scripts, of which action is generated on reaction-planning architecture.

3.2 Agents Action In order to realize these agents action, we have defined what kinds of actions are suitable in such environment at some points of view. Concerned with agents action on the client side, two functions are necessary, of which agent simulates the other past learners action to be aware of others view points and shoots some questions to the learner to improve the acquired knowledge into stable one. (1) Simu-agents simulation This example of script shows how simu-agents imitate the past learners action when a learner requests to show certain past discussion. Since AAVC system abbreviates the past discussion, each statement has to go to the tune to the relative time in each lecture. The first statement in a discussion goes at the relative time (RT) from the beginning of the lecture. As to other statements, the system calculates the start time in the way to summate RT plus each statements calculated interval time. In that environment, there are some cases that a learner wants to ask some questions or to comment on his/her opinion during watching a discussion. Of course, she/he can, but without stopping its discussion and the statement is added at the end of the discussion at the relative time. If she/he wants to cut into the discussion, she/he must start new discussion with a new title. (2) Claque-agents addressing It is important to fix the acquired knowledge in the lecture to the stable. So the system enables a teacher to establish the claque-agents addressing with some attributes (relative time in the lecture, what statement to appear, and other flags). The statement belongs to some kinds of question, comment, or a fixed form of an examination. When a learner attends at a lecture, claque addresses to the learner and brings his/her answer to helper on the server-side.

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While (exists statements) { If (first statement of the discussion) { Then { Define the agents action as follows: Start time: relative time (RT) of the Discussion Interval time: calculate time fit for the statement length Display: parallel (statement 0) } } Else if (statement ID == N) { Then { Define the agents action as follows: Start time: relative time of the statement Interval time: calculate time :(RT + summate later statements time) Display: parallel (statement N) } } }

(3) Helper-agents advise Helper-agent plays two important roles. First role is that helper diagnoses the learners answer of the claques question and replies it if a teacher establish the action. The second role is to retrieve candidates to the question of a learner, which is inputted during watching the past discussion, from the shared knowledge base. If topics are not found, helper-agent retrieves from personal knowledge base. In that case, only the candidates from personal knowledge base of which attribute is open to public are shown to the learner.

3.3 Classroom formation AAVC has two ways of classroom formation that are available in which a learner requests to join the classroom. When the members in the classroom are few at the beginning, the number of the displayed agents is large. But the number of participants who have joined to a classroom increases as time goes on. Then the displayed classmates have to be filtered off on certain criterion as follows. (1) Regard the communication among learners as important The system selects simu-agents as classmates at first, who have participated in the classroom and uttered in this model. The system gives high priority to be selected to those who have uttered more times than others. In this way, the system attempt to support an asynchronous encounter and to increase collaborations among learners. (2) Regard the educational strategy of the teacher as important The system selects claque-agents as classmates to be given the high priority of selecting. While this type makes a learner collaborate with teacher rather than other

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learners, a learner may want to collaborate with other learners in order to answer the question from claques. AAVC changes how to select these criterions automatically. At the beginning of the classroom, the system use (1) because many topics among learners are expected to discuss then. Since the number of discussion occurred in the classroom decreases, the system selects (2) to intervene the learners study.

4 Implementation
4.1 System Configuration

Fig.3 shows the system configuration of AAVC. AAVC system is built on the WWW with Java. As a fundamental rule, the server is to control and the clients to request. While all available data/files are located on the server side, clients have only viewer and don't have any data. Each data and Modules on the server side are shown as follows:

Shared Knowledge

Personal Knowledge

Action Log

Agent Planning Manager

Communication Server

Contents & Templates

Server (Servlet)

Session/Time Manager

Communication Middleware

Client (Browser   & Applet)

Time Keeper

Communication Client

Agent  ctor Action  onitor M Agent Actor  Agent A ctor A UI

Learner

Fig. 3. System Configuration

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Video contents: Video images of the lectures, which can be edited by the teacher. Action log: Action history log files of hold session, which will be processed and made into a learner model, and then deleted when the learning finished. The AAVC system makes into learner model by diagnosing these action logs, which is used for another learner. Shared Knowledge: Shared knowledge base is constructed of some tables. For example, question and answer about prearranged keywords, monitoring the synchronous communication with chat, and e-mail based asynchronous communication among learners. Personal Knowledge: Compared with shared knowledge, the AAVC system has the personal knowledge base to storage individual memo. A learner can use memo tool at anytime she/he wants, of which enables to write the memo text and some drawings. They are processed into individual objects in the database on server-side. Session/Time Manager: is to manage the session-ID, other session variables and relative/absolute time of clients lecture Agent Planning Manager: is to control the agent's activity as keep the time Agent Actor: is to act each action thread in time order unless agent-planning manager gives priority to another thread. Action Monitor: is to monitor the clients interaction and to propose additional information to a learner

4.2 User interface

Fig. 4. An example of User Interface There are two factors of technology to give learners the feeling of much presence. One is video image frame, which shows a teacher's lecture with its teaching material,

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and the other is classmates frame, which shows the other learners' action. Fig.4 is an image of main window. When a learner requests a lecture to watch, she/he goes into the virtual classroom of which mainly components are the lecture video image and learners pictures. In addition, extra information is seen in another windows to show the classroom's properties, real learners' information to participate in, and the other classrooms' information. The video image is embedded at opposite side to the virtual learners in the window. A learner can see the lecture in it and control the streaming as the learner's occasion demands. Some certain actions, which are carried on table 1, are brought to a learner by clicking the virtual objects and selecting displayed menus. Those menus make learners collaborate with others, who are classified to a teacher, another learner, and the system's educational agent. To collaborate with others, a learner inputs some questions or comments to the WWW server. In some cases, the server rapidly replies at the actions of the learner, but it does not in other cases. That's depends on the teacher's readiness for the classroom. If any candidates of answer-sentences are not retrieved, the system sends a question-message to learners or a teacher by asynchronous tools like e-mail.

Conclusion

We proposed the agents contribution in an agent-based asynchronous virtual classroom. Its architecture allows learners to learn anytime and anywhere. To realize that, this paper specially emphasized on how the system selects multi-agents to construct the classmates, when those agents acts, and what kind of actions of them is activated. As the knowledge demands imposed upon those who teach and learn increase, new technologies are making possible innovative approaches to educating students and employees outside of the academic and corporate classroom. For learners who are geographically remote from tutors and peer students, the AAVC system plays very important role. Due to AAVC, teachers and learners are needless to share time and place. While we have not referred to the membership in the same class, the teacher may confine the member of the class, as she/he wants. However, the teacher has to work hard for initial readiness. So our future work is to reduce the work of a teacher and to evaluate the prototype system through its trial use.

References
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Hiltz, S. and Wellman, B.: Asynchronous Learning Networks as a Virtual Classroom, Communication of ACM, Vol.40, No.9 (1997) 44-49 Longworth, N., and Davies, W., K.: LIFELONG LEARNING, Kogan Page Ogata, H., Matsuura, K., and Yano, Y.: Knowledge Awareness: Bridging between Shared Knowledge and Collaboration in Sharlok, Proc. of Educational-Telecommunications 1996, Boston, U.S.A. (1996) 232-237 Matsuura, K., Ogata, H., and Yano, Y.: Agent-based Asynchronous Virtual Classroom, Proc. of ICCE99, Vol.1, Japan (1999) 133-140