CRCD/EI: ALASKA: Applet and Library Augmented Shared Knowledge Areas

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This project involves collaboration between the PI at the US Air Force Academy, and partners at SRI International, and the University of Colorado. The project involves building and testing a prototype of a platform that integrates shared work in educational domains. The platform facilitates opening of a series of new and instructionally potent interactive pathways: each student interacts with his or her personal agent in solving problems or acquiring new curricular concepts, the professor can also direct the agents, and all of them -- professor, student or agent -- have immediate access to the curriculum-tailored library of applets that provide clarifying visualizations, simulations, animations or fuller explanations of curriculum concepts. The agents communicate with each other and can aggregate instructionally specific data across the class for the professor. The professor also has a perceptive agent in his or her space to organize data but also to serve as an observer that can debrief with the instructor and with other agents. The three IT advances that are integrated in this project involve shared workspaces; digital libraries; and perceptive animated agents. The curriculum development research involves teams of upper level computer science students and educators who collaborate in the creation of applet libraries that are customized for individual curricula. The deliverables for this project include: Shared Workspaces, Applets, and Perceptive Agents. For the purposes of this project, a Shared Workspace involves a software application -- such as a programming editor or electronic sketchpad -- that is networked and shared by different users in a "What You See Is What I See" or WYSIWIS manner and that also permits teacher-to-class screen broadcasting. This project's foci lie with instructionally sophisticated WYSIWIS architectures whose interfaces feature authentic classroom metaphors. In the context of this project, Applets are portable "mini-programs" that produce text or video explanations, simulations, visualizations, animations, or graphical representations of course concepts. And, finally, the Perceptive Agents developed for ALASKA enable a form of personal tutoring, where the agent-tutor and student work closely together in a virtual one-on-one setting. Agents in this project engage in simple dialogs with students to help fulfill their goals; they have three possible classes of responses to student requests: 1) give an answer or invoke an applet; 2) engage in a clarification dialog with the student; or 3) pass the history of the interaction to the teacher or agent network for resolution. This project's framework is easily translated to classroom settings for many other disciplines with compatible curricula as well as to asynchronous learning environments. The proposal capitalizes on and extends substantial investments by NSF and others in animated agent technologies, digital library production, and participatory design models for crafting high quality and usable education objects, and collaborative lesson-studies.