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 learning perspective that helps to promote the learning interests of students. However, there is a lack of methodology to develop and deploy a personalized and engaging virtual learning environment to various learning subjects. In our paper, we propose an Agent-oriented VIrtual Learning Environment (AVILE) as a new "learning by playing" paradigm, in which each learning 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' learning process, and stimulates the students to make deeper learning within the exploration and knowledge transfer on real problems in the virtual learning environment. We adopted this methodology to teach plant transportation for secondary school students and received very positive results. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.