A Multi-Agent Design of a Peer-Help Environment

This paper presents a multi-agent approach to design of adaptive distributed collaborative and peer help environments, which addresses a number of challenges: locating appropriate human and electronic resources depending on the help-request, motivating users to help each other, and is easily extendible "in-depth" and "in-breadth". We explore two novel approaches in user modelling: modelling of user social characteristics and modelling the relationships between users to support user collaboration and peer help. We show how adaptive behaviour of a heterogeneous distributed system can arise as a result of negotiation of goal-oriented autonomous cognitive agents. We are introducing an economic model in order to motivate users to collaborate and provide peer help while protecting helpers from getting overloaded with requests. Finally, we propose using multi-agent simulation tools to test the appropriateness of various economic models for a learning