5. Agents in E-Learning Environments

A recent trend in the field of e-learning and tutoring systems is to utilize agent technology and develop and use different kinds of agents in virtual learning environments. Software agents, or simply agents, are usually defined as autonomous software entities, with various degrees of intelligence, capable of exhibiting both reactive and pro-active behaviour in order to satisfy their design goals. From the point of e-learning and tutoring systems harvester and pedagogical agents are of the special research interest. Harvester agents are in charge of collecting learning material from online, often heterogeneous repositories and success depends on the quality and standards of teaching material representation. The main goals of pedagogical agents are to motivate and guide students through the learning process, by asking questions and proposing solutions. This chapter presents a possible trend in use of intelligent agents for personalised learning within tutoring system. Some possibilities of the use of several kinds of agents in a stand-alone e-learning architecture are proposed.