Pedagogical agent models for massive online education. Yee-King, M. & D'Inverno, M. 2015.
Pedagogical agent models for massive online education [pdf]Website  abstract   bibtex   
The effective implementation of Massively Open Online Courses poses fascinating challenges. We address two such challenges using an agent based approach, employing formal specifications to artic- ulate an agent design which can later be used for software development. The challenges addressed are: 1) How can a learner be provided with a personalised learning experience? 2) How can a learner make best use of the heterogenous com- munity of humans and agents who co-habit the virtual learning environment? We present formal specifications for an open learner model, a learning environment, learning plans and a personal learn- ing agent. The open learner model represents the learner as having current and desired skills and knowledge and past and present learning plans. The learning environment is an online platform afford- ing learning tasks which can be carried out by indi- viduals or communities of users and agents. Tasks are connected together into learning plans, with pre and post conditions. We demonstrate how the per- sonal learning agent can find learning plans and propose social connections for its user within a system which affords a dynamic set of learning plans and a range of human/ agent social relation- ships, such as learner-teacher, learner-learner and producer-commentator.

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