Software agents to support students working on group projects

Whatley, JE; Ferneley, E; Jones, M

Abstract

This project is designed to develop and apply mechanisms for supporting teamwork, so that students get the most out of their projects, through development of a software system to support students working in team projects online. Online teamwork is problematical for a number of reasons, such as getting acquainted with team members, communications between members and knowing what progress has been made on the project. Possible solutions include software agent technology: intelligent systems to monitor progress across an Internet connection, and offer advice to students. These systems continuously operate in the background on a student’s workstation and act autonomously to suggest ways in which the student team should prepare to start their teamwork, or alter their actions in terms of team progress when the agent detects a need.

Within this project an agent prototype has been developed to perform a limited set of functions to help students to get started on their teamwork, and the results of a trial carried out using teams working on projects on campus have informed our further design, and work is in progress on a client-server system for this preparation and supporting role, which will be tried on student teams and evaluated.

Citation

Whatley, J., Ferneley, E., & Jones, M. Software agents to support students working on group projects

• Report Type: Project Report
• Deposit Date: Jun 19, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 2, 2017
• Publisher URL: http://www.ece.salford.ac.uk/proceedings/papers/jw_03.rtf
• Additional Information: Funders : Teaching and Learning Quality Improvement Scheme