An Interactive Web-Based Environment Using Pedagogical Agents

Abstract

This paper describes the architecture of an Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) on the Internet using companions, including a human one geographically distant from the learning site. The achieved system relies on 3-tiers Client/Server architecture (Client, Web Server, Data and applications Server) where human and software agents can communicate via the Internet and use the DTL strategy (Double Test Learning). The architecture contains five main agents: a tutor agent in charge of guiding the learner; a system agent whose role is to manage and to control the accesses to the system; a teacher agent in charge of the management and the updating of the different bases; a learner agent representing the main agent of the system for whom the teaching is dedicated, and finally a learning companion agent whose role can sometimes be as an assistant, and other times, as a troublemaker.