E-TEACHING AND E-ASSESSMENT IN ACCOUNTING USING INTELLIGENT PEDAGOGICAL AGENTS

Abstract

Internationally, there are several preoccupations concerning accounting training by the use of ICTs, no matter if they are performed in an institutionalized environment or not. The creation of an intelligent training system requires the incorporation of certain software elements with initiative, a certain humanized intelligent agent. These elements are very important in humanizing the artificial process, leading thus to the idea of using intelligent pedagogical agents in educational software. Intelligent pedagogical agents can express human-like feelings; they can learn the user?s interests, habits and preferences, and display human and social behavior, or even they can substitute some of the teacher?s features. ContTest is a multi-agent system for teaching and learning accounting. It uses a group of intelligent agents for initial and constant assessment, for teaching and illustrating, for generating tests, for checking answers, and for the final assessment and grading. Some of the agents used in ContTest are pedagogical agents. The pedagogical agents use both animated artificial characters and video-sequences with real teachers. In this paper, we will proof that the combined use of these technologies is very useful. The animated artificial character, although less human in aspect, can be more flexibly designed and can have a bidirectional message exchange with the learner. On the other hand, pre-made video sequences, although more rigid, will give the impression of a person?s real presence that instructs the student in an interactive manner. Our paper will present the architecture of the general system, with focuses on the combination of the both type of pedagogical agents. Also, we will present the results of using the pedagogical agents of the ContTest system in a class of students at ?Accounting and Business Information Systems?.