Identification of Services and Agents

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Nowadays, one can easily find in the Internet commercial and academic environments in which agents can be implemented, but finding methodologies to design multiagent systems is not easy. Some ideas may come from software engineering, like that for Object Design (Coad & Yurdon, 1991) and OMT and UML (Blaha & Premerlani, 1997); knowledge engineering like KADS (Wielinga & Schereiber, 1990), KOD (Vogel, 1988), MKM (Ermine et al., 1996), and REX (Malvache & Prieur, 1993), or from enterprise modeling (Fox, 1998; Wiig, 1993, 1994) if the services are well defined.

In our case, the services we needed did not yet exist in practice, and every system specification had to be based on what was known from the limited use of portfolios, PBL, and from the past efforts to implement some of the concepts in the theoretical framework.

For this reason, we used the SAAS method to help in the process of analysis and agent specification in the context of human activities with knowledge management that could be helped by the introduction of cognitive agents. Such agents would perform or record sensible[3] activities performed by humans (Azevedo, 1997; Barth s & Azevedo, 1998).

SAAS is defined as a series of eight steps:

  • Step 1. Gathering viewpoints

  • Step 2. Classifying activities and resources

  • Step 3. Obtaining validation by the group

  • Step 4. Descripting services

  • Step 5. Writing scenarios

  • Step 6. Building a mock-up

  • Step 7. Identifying competences

  • Step 8. Synthesizing competences

SAAS Steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 are not applicable in a COLE, because COLE agents are not for implementing services that already exist and are performed by people who can be interviewed and describe how they work. The COLE is a learning environment to test new practices. Further details about the SAAS steps can be obtained in the literature (Azevedo, 1997; Barth s & Azevedo, 1998). Briefly, Steps 1 and 2 consist of gathering information through interviews and organizing it in tabular format (cards) and graphs; Steps 3 and 4 involve determining the potential services that could be implemented; Steps 5 to 8 are required for validating the findings. We now detail the approach, giving some examples of how we used Steps 4 to 8 in the context of our COLE.

As our team was small and did not include people with strong experience in the assessment of collaborative learning, we decided to start working by studying collaborative concepts, by brainstorming to create an initial scenario where such concepts could be developed and assessed, and by refining to develop a first version of a collaborative environment.

Applying Step 4 of SAAS: Description of Services

The services selected by different groups were compared. If conflicts occurred, the groups had to get together to resolve them. The knowledge engineer then produced the final Table of Services, which contained a detailed description of each proposed service. This table would be used later for positioning competences within services. The Table of Services had to be approved by all the groups. The first services that seemed to be necessary in the COLE are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Primary services necessary in an online collaborative learning environment

ID

Service Description

Teacher

Student

S-01

Editing a portfolio (declaring a hypothesis, linking it to arguments and to an intellectual production)

X

S-02

Searching for arguments (documents) in the digital library

X

S-03

Searching for arguments (documents) in the Internet

X

X

S-04

Introducing and indexing new arguments (documents) in the digital library

X

X

S-05

Submitting an idea to other group members

X

S-06

Voting on an idea to be added into a group portfolio

X

S-07

Enriching someone else’s idea

X

X

S-08

Visualizing and evaluating one’s own performance

X

S-09

Visualizing a student’s performance

X

S-10

Visualizing a group’s performance

X

S-11

Finding people in other groups with ideas “close” to one’s own

X

X

S-12

Annotating pedagogical strategies and actions adopted with students

X

S-13

Sending messages to other group members

X

S-14

Sending messages to a student or a group

X

S-15

Evaluating one’s performance in the use of the digital library

X

S-16

Evaluating one’s performance in the negotiation of ideas

X

S-17

Evaluating one’s performance in collaborating with ideas of others

X

S-18

Evaluating one’s performance in the creation of intellectual production

X

S-19

Evaluating one’s performance in performing social duties

X

Applying Step 5 of SAAS: Writing Scenarios

Then, for each service in the Table of Services, we had to write scenarios showing how the service would be used. Their purpose was to describe carefully and realistically the work environment. They had to be written by the person who was responsible for designing the agent supporting the service. Then, all scenarios were presented to the group of users corresponding to a particular profile. The group then edited the scenarios, criticizing, adding, or removing parts of them.

One example of a scenario produced for our COLE is presented in the following:

Scenario 01: Teacher Creates New Project for Students to Work On

M rcio is a teacher working in an online lifelong learning program.

During the last weeks, he has been teaching 15 students working in three groups of five on a project called ALPHA. Now, he learns he will be given 30 new students. He does not want to mix the two groups. He decides to create a new project (BETA) for the newcomers. The topic they will work on during the next five weeks is “Improving Quality in Production Processes.”

The students’ average age is 32. The teacher decides to organize the students in six groups of five online students each. He is going to give them a complex case where different solutions can be applied to improve quality. In this sense, the PBL approach will play the role of a project manager and the students the role of specialists looking for good solutions.

The teacher launches his COLE and enters his log-in and password.

The COLE home page informs the students about events that have occurred in the groups (e-mails received from students or colleagues; students’ significant actions) and displays icons representing the services that are available to a project manager (consulting, creating a new project, inspecting an existing portfolio, assessing students’ activities, creating a new group, or interacting with other project managers).

M rcio chooses to create a new project for his 30 new students.

M rcio>

creating new project (pressing the icon)

COLE >

Name? Subject? Starting date? Duration? Schedule? (from window)

M rcio>

BETA, quality, 15/05/2003, 5 weeks, standard

COLE >

BETA keywords to be shared with students?

M rcio>

process quality, security, information retrieval

M rcio>

Insert document in BETA

COLE >

Please identify the document path.

M rcio identifies the path and decides to create new groups for the new students.

M rcio>

creating new group

COLE >

In which project? ALPHA or BETA?

M rcio>

BETA

COLE >

group-01/BETA, Insert the students please.

In a scroll window, the COLE presents the row of students. M rcio inserts five of the new ones into the first group and creates five more groups to include the remaining 25 students.

Applying Step 6 of SAAS: Building a Mock-up

Each part of a scenario leads to defining computer screens (showing the interactions with a particular service). A simulation was built to animate the scenarios. The result was presented to selected members of a group for feedback.

In the COLE context, we used fake service windows, flip charts, and a white board so that the team could see what the service windows should look like. Figure 2 provides an example of the flow among the windows.

click to expand
Figure 2: Windows used in a mock-up

Applying Step 7 of SAAS: Identifying Competences

Each scenario contains references to competences (actions needed in services) linked to the services listed in Table 1. Competences are identified, named, and described; input and output parameters are recorded. Examples of use are noted. The needs of each competence are made explicit.

By analyzing Table 1, we can group the services as different types of agents (Table 2). The architecture of an open collaborative-learning environment may have a set of specialized and specific agents. In this work, the agents’ services and their organization were designed to allow the use of PBL and a portfolio edition.

Table 2: Primary agents necessary in an online collaborative learning environment

Service ID

Agent

Agent Description

S-01, S-08, S-09, S-10, S-18

AgIP

The Individual Portfolio Agent is a semantic Net editor that allows students to represent their ideas and envision how they are constituted and interrelated.

S-02, S-15

AgLi

The Library Agent returns documents from the digital library, based on keywords selected by students. It introduces new documents in the library.

S-03, S-04

AgWS

The Web Search Agent helps students search sites in the Web based on the keywords related to their portfolios.

S-04

AgDi

The D ictionary Agent helps students discover the relations among keywords in the taxonomic trees.

S-05, S-06, S-07, S-13, S-14, S-16, S-19

AgBa

The Ballot Agent monitors submissions of ideas, copies agreed-upon ideas in the group portfolio, and can transfer ideas from the group portfolio to an individual portfolio.

S-11

AgBr

The Broker Agent tries to identify other students who have worked on similar subjects in order to put its owner in contact with them (by pattern matching of portfolios pieces).

S-12

AgDy

The Diary Agent is used by teachers to store profiles of students’ performances and the planning undertaken to motivate students’ work.

S-17, S-19

AgGP

The Group Portfolio Agent shows images of a group portfolio for the agent’s owner and teachers.

S-11

AgLM

The Living Memory agent stores all portfolios built in the online collaborative environment and returns data related to them or even pieces of data when requested.

Applying Step 8 of SAAS: Synthesizing Competences

In this phase, all competences referred to in the scenarios, related to a given service, are grouped together. Some competences can be fused. The goal is to reduce the amount of coding needed. At this stage, external needs, which cannot be found in other agents, will have to be added locally. Thus, the amount of programming needed for each agent can be estimated and rationalized.

[3]According to Grundstein (1996), “sensible activities” are those that, if interrupted, would compromise the success of a given process.



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Designing Distributed Environments with Intelligent Software Agents
Designing Distributed Learning Environments with Intelligent Software Agents
ISBN: 1591405009
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 121

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