Intelligent Agents Supporting Distributed Collaborative Learning

Abstract

In the context of distributed collaborative learning, it is usually difficult for students to be aware of others’ activities and for instructors to overview the process and regulate the collaboration. In order to facilitate collaborative learning, intelligent agents were developed to support the awareness and regulation of the collaboration. This chapter discusses the facilitation role of intelligent agents and how they support students and instructors in distributed collaborative-learning environments. By monitoring the collaboration, the agents compute statistics, detect possible problems, and give advice synchronously and asynchronously to the students and instructor based on their activities and requests. In so doing, the agents not only help students to self-regulate their activities but also help instructors to maintain an overview of the collaboration so that they can intervene when necessary.