Learning by Playing in Agent-Oriented Virtual Learning Environment

Abstract

Virtual environments have gained tremendous popularity among young generation in recent years. Learning in the virtual environment becomes a new perspective that helps to promote the interests of students. However, there is a lack of methodology to develop and deploy a personalized and engaging virtual environment to various subjects. In our paper, we propose an Agent-oriented VIrtual Learning Environment (AVILE) as a new learning by playing paradigm, in which each object is built up as a goal of a Goal-Oriented Learning Agent (GOLA). In AVILE, students conduct the personalized virtual experiments through the simulations and engaging role-playing games for knowledge acquisition by interacting with the intelligent GOLAs. Each GOLA provides most appropriate instructions by analyzing the students' process, and stimulates the students to make deeper within the exploration and knowledge transfer on real problems in the virtual environment. We adopted this methodology to teach plant transportation for secondary school students and received very positive results.