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Tech Report kmi-97-11 Abstract


The Virtual Participant: Lessons to be Learned from a Case-Based Tutor's Assistant
Techreport ID: kmi-97-11
Date: 1997
Author(s): Simon Masterton
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We describe a system which uses an agent-based approach to support teaching in the collaborative setting of asynchronous plain-text electronic conferencing. We have identified areas within which tutors who use conferencing need support and developed a system which helps out in an opportunistic manner. The agent we have developed uses a case-based approach to instruction by offering help on common student problems. The cases used are examples of problems experienced by students in previous years and discussions of how they were resolved. These cases are presented by the agent when it identifies an appropriate point in the conference. An experimental version of this agent, which we call the 'Virtual Participant' (VP), has been tested on the Open University MBA course 'Creative Management'. We review the effect of the system and the lessons to be learned from this experiment.

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Accepted at CSCL'97
 
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Knowledge Management is...


Knowledge Management
Creating learning organisations hinges on managing knowledge at many levels. Knowledge can be provided by individuals or it can be created as a collective effort of a group working together towards a common goal, it can be situated as "war stories" or it can be generalised as guidelines, it can be described informally as comments in a natural language, pictures and technical drawings or it can be formalised as mathematical formulae and rules, it can be expressed explicitly or it can be tacit, embedded in the work product. The recipient of knowledge - the learner - can be an individual or a work group, professionals, university students, schoolchildren or informal communities of interest.
Our aim is to capture, analyse and organise knowledge, regardless of its origin and form and make it available to the learner when needed presented with the necessary context and in a form supporting the learning processes.