A Proposal to Integrate Context-Awareness Services to Enhance CSCL Environments Based on Intelligent Agents

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is a computational approach allowing students−being organized into groups− to work together for a common goal and discuss from different points of view always seeking to improve learning processes. The context-awareness concept, which is inherent to humans when performing any learning activity, becomes the main component for monitoring activities in virtual learning environments. The aim of this paper is to integrate context-awareness services to enhance CSCL environments supported by Multi-Agent Systems. The awareness-group-agent that composes the system architecture provides the coordination of several agents responsible of handling each of the 11 context-awareness services proposed. This characteristic allows both students and teachers at a given time be aware of their teamwork progress status during execution of the CSCL-MAS environment. In order to validate the incorporation of context-aware services a prototype was built and tested through a case study. Results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of using this kind of approaches in collaborative learning environments which constitutes an attempt to improve learning processes.