Abstract
In this project the use of Virtual World technology and Artificial Intelligence to produce a shared social landscape for the society of learners. The idea is to create a Virtual World in which learners can participate and interact. One that is parallel to the learning environment or classroom. This can be viewed as an online multi-user environment such as “Second-Life” where on-line learners can interact and construct their own spaces. Their ability to work in that space is governed by input from their robot mentor. Skills in the Virtual World are provided as a result of a student’s behavior in the learning environment. The Virtual World can persist after the learning session is concluded so it provided an incentive for learners to do well in the learning session so that they can acquire points that translate into skills in the corresponding Virtual World. That Virtual World can be shared by several learning sessions or classes to provide a more comprehensive learning environment.
The overall approach is two-tiered in that each Robot mentor can acquire knowledge about the learner’s behavior within a given learning environment or class. The learner’s behavior is then translated into focus scores that can be applied to the Virtual World by a Supervisor, the Instructor Robot Learning Unit (IRLU). The Supervisor is in charge of updating the world based upon learner performances and compiling an ethnography of the social activities that take place within the environment. This ethnography of online users will describe in general terms how the environment is utilized by the group of learners. This information can be used by the Supervisor to adjust the Robots interaction with the learners and th cycle begins again. Such an approach with a singl learner has been studied previously by the authors [1].
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Djuric, A., Zhu, M., Shi, W., Palazzolo, T., Reynolds, R.G. (2021). Using Cobots, Virtual Worlds, and Edge Intelligence to Support On-line Learning. In: Stephanidis, C., et al. HCI International 2021 - Late Breaking Papers: Cognition, Inclusion, Learning, and Culture. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13096. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90328-2_24
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