Building a next-generation infrastructure for agent-based distance learning

Abstract

The emergence of the internet has radically changed the way in which we learn, teach and train. This paper proposes an integrated and extensible architecture for agent-based distance learning. The architecture provides component-based extensibility, allowing emerging technologies to be plugged-in, so that they can produce synergy. It provides HTTP and IIOP connections for maintaining and delivering courseware to students. Via an HTTP connection, our Persona system provides a personalised service to each set of courseware, allowing it to customise its content and/or presentation context-sensitively. This service facilitates the effective delivery of courseware. Via an IIOP connection, our SoftDock system provides a foundation facility allowing users to work collaboratively in teams. Our current educational domain is software modelling. Participants learn the basic concepts and principles of software modelling and then leverage their newly-acquired modelling skills. We believe our work provides a blueprint for showing how emerging technologies can be applied to practical distance learning applications.