Using a simulated student to repair difficulties in collaborative learning

We describe the use of a simulated student in a synchronous but distributed collaborative learning environment in the domain of programming. The role of the simulated student is to detect and repair difficulties in collaborative learning amongst the human students, for example when a human student i...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Vizcaino, A., du Boulay, B.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Collaboration
Collaborative work
Computational modeling
Computer science education
Distributed computing
Humans
Intelligent agent
Problem-solving
Reflection
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We describe the use of a simulated student in a synchronous but distributed collaborative learning environment in the domain of programming. The role of the simulated student is to detect and repair difficulties in collaborative learning amongst the human students, for example when a human student is too passive or when the students start chatting about off-topic conversations. The simulated student intervenes by posting messages in the shared "chat" window, just like the human students and was believed to be another human student by them. The paper describes the rules by which the simulated student operates and briefly outlines an evaluation of the system with university first year programming students. The system proved to be successful both in detecting a range of difficulties and in intervening effectively.
DOI:10.1109/CIE.2002.1185943