Exploiting Agents and Artifacts Metamodel to Provide Abstraction of E-Learning Resources

Abstract

Even though multi agent systems (MAS) based e-learning applications are common in the literature, most of them are standalone applications containing a single type of agent responsible for accessing learning resources. Considering the highly distributed nature of learning resources, this approach is not feasible for large-scale e-learning systems. Agents and Artifacts (A&A) Metamodel focuses on environment modeling in multi agent system design and models entities in agents' environments with artifacts as first class entities like the agents. In e-learning systems, learning resources are part of the environment of the agents and agents interact with them constantly. Therefore, abstraction of learning resources from different MAS based e-learning applications can be achieved by exploiting A&A Metamodel. In this paper, an e-learning environment model based on A&A Metamodel has been proposed and implemented as a prototype with CArtAgO framework. The proposed model supports dynamically changing nature of learning materials that can be available at different sources.