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Open Wonderland and Multiagent Virtual Learning Environments. Oscar Lin Steve Leung School of Computing and Information Systems Faculty of Science and Technology Athabasca University, Canada. January 13, 2012 . Virtual Worlds for e-Learning.
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Open Wonderland and Multiagent Virtual Learning Environments Oscar Lin Steve Leung School of Computing and Information SystemsFaculty of Science and Technology Athabasca University, Canada January 13, 2012
Virtual Worlds for e-Learning • more dimensions than physical environments • more social than social network software • nuanced ways (able to show slight difference that may be difficult to notice but are fairly important • more engaging than physical classrooms
Approaches • Virtual classrooms, e.g. • Second life, VirtualPREX – Providing Virtual Professional Experience for Pre-Service Teachers • Fantasy worlds, e.g. • Virtual Singapura
Problems • Knowledge and Intelligence • Serious games, simulations • Usability • Pedagogical value • Complexity of game functions and pedagogy functions. • Assigning a game • Educational resource/user management • Scenario generation • Score-keeping • Providing hints • Interactiveness and immersion • Realistic, engaging, and immersive • modeling the virtual students and virtual audience which are implemented as NPCs or bots. • Adaptivity and personalization • Keeping track of individual interests, preferences, motivations, and goals of the human participants (i.e., learners) and building user/student models.
Intelligent Virtual Worlds for e-Learning • Desirable features • Smart • Engaging • Effective • Usable • Agent technology • Sensory ability • Reasoning capability • Social ability • Roles of the agents • Functional modules • Non-player characters (NPCs) • Personal agents • Challenges • User modeling • Decision making • Coordination
Quiz Games in Classrooms • In classrooms, teachers usually use quiz games to create some interesting activities. • The purposes of Quiz Games for the classes • Good for reviewing and reinforcing previously taught material • Good for warming up or ending lesson on a high • A quiz encapsulates the basic unit of conversation
Quiz Master • Quiz master • A TV game show, where a small group of contestants compete by answering questions presented by the game show host. Host - Pedagogical agent
Purpose of the Project • Build QuizMASter • a virtual world based educational application that mimics a quiz game in classrooms. • To build engaging, affectionate, and effectivepedagogical agents which is the virtual host in QuizMASter. • Team members: • AdienDubbelboer (FHSS) • Steve Leung (FST) • SandeepVirwaney (BSc CIS) • AJ Armstrong (NAIT, MSc IS) • SimaShabani (MSc IS) • SteeveLeberge (MSc IS) • Mike Proctor (MSc IS) • Martin Weng (visiting PhD student, Taiwan) • Bob Heller (FHSS) • Oscar Lin (FST)
Agents Architecture • Agents are encapsulated computer systems that are designed to behave flexibly and somewhat autonomously to achieve some goal(s). • Agents are situated in some environment and have some autonomy and capabilities to observe that environment. • They can communicate those observations to other agents. This makes them particularly suited to distributed environments. • Within the distributed environment, the Multi-Agent System (MAS) can be designed using one or more architectures. • The autonomous nature of agents implies that the architecture can even develop dynamically at run-time.
Architecture (1) • As an initial step, we integrated Open Wonderland and JADE through the starting of a JADE server separate from Open Wonderland • Jeanne and Lin, 2011
Architecture (2) • Add a Jason module to Open Wonderland that takes an NPC and controls its movement in the environment. • The NPC runs on the Open Wonderland server and pulls an AgentSpeak() asl file from the file system, sets up its belief system and goals, and then runs. • The Open Wonderland module system makes it simple to extend Open Wonderland to include the framework and any other functionality that is required.
CArtAgO-based Architecture (3) • Common ARTifact infrastructure for AGents Open environments • A general purpose framework that makes it possible to program and execute virtual environments for multi-agent systems. • Based on the Agents & Artifacts (A&A) meta-model for modeling and designing multi-agent systems. • Enables customization of the rendering of visible artifacts for different clients
Scenario • Participants • Contestants (4~6) • The host • The Audience • Subject • ENGL 255 • Process of a QuizMASter session • The host greets the contestants • The audience will be cheering for and looking at all the contestants simultaneously. • Questions are displayed. • Contestants will answer the questions. Scores will be kept. Hints will be provided if needed. • Video: • http://oscar.athabascau.ca/QuizMAster_Lin.avi
Future Work • Proofs: • We are planning for an experiment to test the effectiveness of the platform. • Comparison of TSI enhanced approach and non-TSI enhanced approach • Measurement of the effectiveness to achieve the learning goals • Enhancement of TSI features • Morphing (how accurate of the morphed features is) • Sensory abilities • There a lot of senses we can mimic • Situational contexts • There a lot of situational information we can process • Modeling of contestants • Agents intelligence: agent learning • Multi-agent intelligence • Emerging behaviour of pedagogical agent in quizzes feedback generation.