Tech Reports
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
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.
Publication(s):
Accepted at CSCL'97
Future Internet
KnowledgeManagementMultimedia &
Information SystemsNarrative
HypermediaNew Media SystemsSemantic Web &
Knowledge ServicesSocial Software
Social Software is...
Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.
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