Simulating pedagogical agents in a virtual learning environment

This paper presents and analyses data from a usability experiment conducted at the University of Bergen in Norway. The experiment is entitled CoPAS: Collaboration Patterns Agent Simulation. CoPAS is a simulation study carried out with the Wizard of Oz technique. Students used a groupware system, TeamWave Workplace, to solve a learning task in the domain of object-oriented analysis and design using UML (Unified Modelling Language) without meeting each other face-to-face. Simulated software agents (human experts) gave advice for various knowledgeintensive tasks, including tool use, domain (UML) understanding and peer-to-peer collaboration. The study is part of multidisciplinary project (DoCTA-NSS) between the University of Bergen, University of Oslo and Telenor R&D. One of the goals of this project is to assess the usability and utility of knowledge-based pedagogical agents for virtual learning environments. Our findings indicate that agents can have an effect on collaboration by making users aware of collaboration patterns (division of labour, explicit roles, etc.) and by creating focus shifts in the users’ interaction.