An experiment using software agents for dialogue analysis in collaborative distance learning

Trends in distance education show a growing emphasis in collaborative learning, stimulating students to exchange ideas and information. A collaborative environment, however, will demand a higher effort from the teacher, who will have to supervise all the discussions among the learners, so that they do not deviate from the intended topic for the lesson. Moreover, the information proceeding from the interactions among the students will provide to the teacher features that allow a individual evaluation of the students and his course. In this way, this paper describes a first experience using Multi-agent architecture able to monitor the communication tools in a distance learning group. This system analyzes the discussions taking place in these tools (discussion list, chat and newsgroups), showing to the teacher statistical information (percentile of participation and number of changed messages) and identifying possible associations in the interactions, such as, topics and subtopics that interest the students, groups of learners that interact intensively, etc.