Supporting Collaborative Learning in Virtual Worlds by Intelligent Pedagogical Agents: Approach, Perspectives

Intelligent pedagogical agents (IPA) are aimed to support learning in virtual worlds. Motivations for adopting IPAs in virtual worlds are to compensate for lack of human pedagogical presence, to improve student engagement, and having autonomous support. Given named challenges to realizing IPAs in virtual worlds, a proposed solution approach is to simulate IPAs with targeted scenarios with intelligent agents prior to realization. This paper discusses intelligent agent based simulation of a collaborative learning scenario that facilitates IPA support to collaborative learning in virtual world. The collaborative learning scenario is composed of multiple avatars interacting to conduct an experiment simulation in a virtual world with an IPA. The paper discusses types of support the agent will do to scaffold the interactive collaborative learning activity, for example by mediating interaction among learners and targeting learning to collaborate as well as collaborating to learn with benefits shown.