Desenvolvimento de um mecanismo de comunicação entre agentes pedagógicos em um ambiente virtual de aprendizagem.

Abstract

Learning is one of the most important skills of being human. With this, many tactics and technologies are being used to motivate students in the acquisition of new knowledge. Information technology is increasingly present, e.g. in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) that have been used in the teaching-learning process. The ITS developed at UNISC (University of Santa Cruz do Sul) is a research project for teachers, students, and ex-students of the university. This environment has received several upgrades in recent years, e.g. the insertion of two pedagogical agents with emotions to interact with students. However, there was no interaction between these agents. Therefore, development of a communication mechanism between those pedagogical agents is the focus of this work. Besides the tutor and companion agents, already existent in the ITS, also was developed the facilitator agent, which communicates with pedagogical agents to determine who must interact with the student. Because the system is reactive (generates a response to a stimulus), the chosen agent should have the ability to treat the stimulus generated by the student in ITS. How more of one pedagogical agent can respond to the same stimulus, a variation of the method of roulette (genetic algorithms) was developed to determine which agent should start the interaction with the student. The protocol communication/interaction and format of messages exchanged between agents were modeled based on the grounding FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents). Finally, interaction scenarios were generated for realization of testing, in the referent content the “New Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement”, with objective to evaluate the mechanism developed.