Using Targeted Negotiation to Support Students’ Learning

Student/system negotiation provides students with the opportunity to assume more responsibility for their own learning. This paper discusses the notion of targeted negotiation, an approach to providing negotiation for specific purposes in intelligent learning environments (ILEs). This targeted negotiation may potentially be aimed at a variety of aspects of ILEs; the object of negotiation will depend on what is appropriate for the particular learning environment. As examples we illustrate two approaches by referring to two systems which employ negotiation for different functions. In one, the object of negotiation is the application of domain knowledge, and the domain knowledge itself. In this system this is necessary because the domain is creative. In the second ILE it is the contents of the student model which are negotiable; here the process is aimed at increasing learner awareness and reflection, thus learning, rather than the domain, is the target of negotiation.