Conceptualizing Intelligent Agents for Teaching and Learning

28 O ver the past few years, universities and colleges have made substantial progress in using the World Wide Web for teaching and learning and for distance-learning applications. Many schools have repurposed course offerings for distance learning, where students and instructors no longer have to meet in the same place at the same time. An increasing number of schools use course management software (CMS) to complement traditional classroom-based instruction. More recently, some universities — like Indiana University1,2 — offer a course template for all their courses. While distance learning and the Web provide more convenient virtual access to learners around the world, some shortcomings limit the benefits, mainly from the perspectives of communication, collaboration, pedagogy, and course administration. The course instructor in a distance-learning situation, for instance, can no longer enjoy the powerful face-to-face communication channels available in a traditional classroom setting. The communication and collaboration channels are limited to capabilities of the tools available within the CMS. The different brands of CMS range from homegrown software environments to sophisticated commercial products. Although new versions include easy-to-use Web authoring tools, most offer passive services. As a result, some instructors spend more time teaching a distance-learning course than teaching the same course in a classroom setting. This problem results mostly from the time-consuming operational nature of online courses. It is not unfair to call the typical CMS a “dumb software environment.” For instance, the instructor is expected to regularly check students’ progress by visiting many Web pages and using different tools within the CMS system to verify student progress and participation. This includes monitoring the message board activities log to verify student participation, consulting the drop box tool to see if students have submitted assignments, and regularly visiting the course activity log to monitor the magnitude of students’ online activities. Performing these tasks in addition to handling hundreds of e-mail messages has become a major time-consuming operation for most instructors. Intelligent agents functioning within a CMS system Intelligent agents perform tasks for students and instructors in a dynamic, personal, and smart teaching and learning environment