An Actor Based Architecture for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

The evolution of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) toward the use of multiple learning strategies calls on a multi-agent architecture. We show how such an architecture can be defined for the pedagogical component of an ITS. After considering the evolution of intelligent agents, we observe that ITS need to have cognitive agents able to model the human behavior in learning situations. They represent what we call actors, a category of reactive, adaptive, instructable and cognitive agents.To assume these properties we present an actor architecture with different layers of cognition: a reactive layer, a control layer, and a cognitive layer which contains learning capabilities. We provide a detailed view of this architecture and show how it functions with an example involving the different actors of a new learning strategy, the learning by disturbing strategy. Key-words: architecture, agents, actors, cognition, learning-by-disturbing, behavior, troublemaker