João Carlos Gluz

MILOS: Infraestrutura de Agentes para Suporte a Objetos de Aprendizagem OBAA

Este artigo discute a colaboracao entre estudantes na internet e a troca de conhecimento por meio desse canal de comunicacao. Propoe uma metodologia que visa potencializar as relacoes entre os usuarios de uma rede educacional situada num contexto especifico. Tal metodo tem como fundamento as teorias do contexto e a analise de redes sociais (ARS), para promover um mapeamento das redes estudadas.Refletir sobre curriculo escolar formal e comunidades de aprendizagem como metafora das TIC dinamizam os caminhos empiricos, construcoes criticas e aprofundamento da difusao do conhecimento como parte do processo de humanizacao/ tecnologizacao do homem. Oriundos de processos e movimentos contemporâneos, a consolidacao de ambientes computacionais nas escolas potencializa a construcao do conhecimento e a socializacao de praticas pedagogicas inovadoras. Esta investigacao assume as situacoes especificas curriculares, procura descobrir o que existe de mais essencial e caracteristico, partindo do conhecimento de curriculo e suas bases teoricas tradicionais, para a construcao da discussao sobre um curriculo em rede associada a instrumentalizacao das comunidades de aprendizagem.O sistema Moodle constitui-se atualmente numa das mais importantes ferramentas de apoio a cursos na Web. Apesar disto, seu modelo apresenta algumas deficiencias para uma estruturacao hierarquica e compartilhamento de materiais digitais entre disciplinas e turmas do seu ambiente virtual. Este artigo apresenta um estudo sobre a arquitetura central do Moodle, propondo a definicao de um novo nucleo, visando o aprimoramento destas caracteristicas.Estudo descritivo, qualitativo, com estudantes da 3a serie de Graduacao em Enfermagem de uma Universidade Publica de Sao Paulo, SP. Os participantes construiram Mapas Conceituais, por meio do software Cmap Tools®. Os dados foram coletados em um Grupo Focal e todos os sujeitos indicaram que o uso do software facilita e garante a organizacao, visualizacao e correlacao dos dados, porem houve dificuldades iniciais relacionadas ao manejo das ferramentas. Conclui-se, que o software Cmap Tools® favoreceu a construcao dos MC por seus recursos de formatacao, porem estrategias de orientacao deveriam ser implantadas. Como resultado, desenvolveu-se um manual para o uso do software Cmap Tool® em video Podcasting.Ha poucas iniciativas com respeito aos ambientes de virtuais para a divulgacao de materiais curriculares sobre modelagem matematica. Esses ambientes oferecem acesso as praticas pedagogicas em modelagem. Este trabalho apresenta um sistema Web para hospedar atividades de modelagem e materiais multimidia para descrever o desenvolvimento do ambiente de modelagem em sala de aula e apoiar outros professores na implementacao em suas praticas pedagogicas.A composicao e sequenciamento de Objetos de Aprendizagem sao discutidas neste trabalho a partir da representacao da estrutura conceitual de um dominio em termos das suas relacoes de dependencia. A composicao de Objetos de Aprendizagem e modelada a partir da estrutura narrativa de um discurso considerando-se os aspetos formais dos planos do conteudo e de expressao. O aspecto formal do conteudo da composicao e dado pelas pelos conceitos e seus relacionamentos e forma da expressao corresponde aos tipos de signos definidos pelo LOM. A estrutura da composicao obtida independe do tipo de midia utilizado e o modelo adequa-se as propostas de composicao adaptativas tanto do ponto de vista do meio como das disponibilidades de conexao.

An Agent-Based Federated Learning Object Search Service

Introduction The Brazilian Ministry of Education provides free digital pedagogical content by means of the Virtual and Interactive Net for Education program (RIVED, 2009), distributing these objects through the International Base of Educational Objects repository (BIOE, 2010). The main goal of these programs is to aid in the development and distribution of electronic educational material by using Learning Objects (LO) as the foremost technology to publish and disseminate such material. The material is formed by educational activities, which may contain multimedia resources, animations, and simulations. To locate a particular object in a repository is a difficult problem depending on the rightful indexation and cataloging of its material. This process corresponds to the fulfilling of the LO metadata with correct information. Metadata is information that describes the characteristics of certain documents, material, or LO. The main purpose of metadata is still to be understood and used by people or software agents in cataloging, searching, and similar tasks (Taylor, 2003). The cataloging and indexation process represents one of the greatest issues to locating educational contents, such as learning objects, because it is through this process that these objects can be found through search engines. Incorrect LO cataloging or indexation causes inefficacy in search processes. This situation is aggravated when LO are distributed and maintained in several distinct repositories. The increase of LO production in Brazil (and around the world) by several different institutions has shown the risk that the material remains unused by the general community, or at least with very restricted use, limited only to the members of the institution in case a unified search mechanism exists capable of finding LO in repositories of most anyone in the institution. Currently there is no standard infrastructure that gives support to a unified search and retrieval of educational resources such as LO (CORDRA Management Group, 2009). To assist in this situation, the present work proposes the creation of an agent-based federated catalog of learning objects (AgCAT). The general objective of this system is to provide an infrastructure of federated LO catalogs that are able to help in the search and retrieval of these educational resources. The system will make intensive use of technologies from Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) research fields (Weiss, 1999; Wooldridge, 2002), seeking to optimize the LO search process. The system will use several protocols and technologies to harvest metadata from LO repositories and digital libraries. Several AgCAT systems can also be federated, forming a federation of LO catalogs. The search for LO in the federation is transparent for its users. A query made in any federated AgCAT system is transparently propagated to all other AgCAT systems in the federation. Therefore, apart from communication delay, a query in any AgCAT system is equivalent to the same query in any other federated system. Only the search propagation protocol must be supported by each federated AgCAT system. The administration and management of each federated AgCAT system is completely independent from the other federated systems, allowing for different institutions to be included easily in the federation. This work presents the functional structure and organization of the AgCAT system, showing the systems architecture, aspects of its prototype, and main results obtained until now. The next two sections present a literature review concerning the main topics related in the present work focusing on the metadata standards supported by AgCAT and the multi-agent technology that supports the system. The following section describes the multi-agent architecture of the system, the organization of its agents, particular details about the formation of the directory federation, and the metadata harvesting process. …

A model of pedagogical negotiation

This paper presents a model of pedagogical negotiation developed for the AMPLIA, an Intelligent Probabilistic Multi-agent Learning Environment. Three intelligent software agents: Domain Agent, Learner Agent and Mediator Agent were developed using Bayesian Networks and Influence Diagrams. The goal of the negotiation model is to increase, as much as possible: (a) the performance of the model the students build; (b) the confidence that teachers and tutors have in the students’ ability to diagnose cases; and the students’ confidence on their own ability to diagnose cases; and (c) the students’ confidence on their own ability to diagnose diseases.

AgentSpeak(PL): A New Programming Language for BDI Agents with Integrated Bayesian Network Model

Within the current BDI paradigm of agent oriented programming, it is not possible to develop a practical and straightforward software when agents beliefs are based on probabilistic knowledge related to their environment, because the logical base of the programming language do not allow this possibility. Usually, to develop this kind of hybrid agent, it is necessary to make use of advanced programming techniques, which combine and integrate different development environments and programming languages in order to represent the logical part and the probabilistic part of the model, to make implementation feasible. This work presents a new agentoriented programming language called AgentSpeak(PL), based in AgentSpeak(L), a classical BDI programming language. AgentSpeak(PL) integrates the concept of probabilistic beliefs through the use of Bayesian Networks, to core BDI programming concepts. The language is implemented through an extension of the Jason programming environment.

Uma Ontologia OWL para Metadados IEEELOM, DublinCore e OBAA

A educacao a distancia tem ganhado significativa atencao tanto na academia quanto nas iniciativas governamentais. Neste contexto, cresce tambem a preocupacao com a avaliacao da qualidade dos diversos aspectos destes cursos mediados pelas tecnologias da informacao e comunicacao. Apesar de muitos trabalhos discutirem diversos aspectos da avaliacao em Ead, a literatura carece de relatos de experiencia que, especialmente, abordem os cursos tecnicos a distancia que possuem especificidades relevantes. Assim, este trabalho relata uma experiencia onde se avalia e adapta uma das propostas existentes na literatura de avaliacao mediada por foruns, ao contexto dos cursos tecnicos a distancia, constituindo-se esta adaptacao e sua discussao as principais contribuicoes do mesmo.Em Educacao a Distância mediada por meio de Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem, foruns de discussao sao um instrumento importante e amplamente utilizado na articulacao de debates e discussoes entre os atores envolvidos no processo de ensino e aprendizagem. Com a ampla utilizacao dos foruns muitas mensagens sao trocadas e isso, por vezes, excede a capacidade de monitoramento por parte dos professores e tutores. O presente trabalho apresenta a concepcao de um classificador de mensagens de foruns que classifica as mensagens em positivas ou negativas, a fim de identificar mensagens que necessitam de maior atencao. Este trabalho aplica conceitos de mineracao de textos, com o algoritmo SVM obtendo taxas de acerto satisfatorias.Este artigo apresenta o framework Contagious, cujo proposito e estabelecer diretrizes que norteiem a construcao de redes sociais online orientadas a Difusao de Inovacoes. Compreendo-se o fenomeno das redes sociais online como consequencia natural do carater social do ser humano, vislumbrou-se esse meio tecnologico de comunicacao e interacao social como potencial ferramenta para a extensao de praticas educativas, com vistas a formacao do carater integral do cidadao. Para isso, foi adotada a teoria de Difusao de Inovacoes, propria das ciencias sociais. As contribuicoes deste trabalho, portanto, compreendem duas vertentes: a) o mapeamento de principios de uma teoria social na forma de recursos computacionais e; b) um enfoque orientado a educacao sobre as redes sociais online.A proposta do trabalho consiste em desenvolver um sistema para ser usado no celular como ferramenta de auxilio para alfabetizacao, utilizando-se de imagens e sons como forma de facilitar o aprendizado. Como metodo de desenvolvimento utiliza-se o processo P@PSEduc (Processo Agil para Software Educativo) e a ferramenta JME (Java Micro Edition).O crescente uso e difusao de tecnologias Web, a ubiquidade de ferramentas educacionais vem proporcionado verdadeiras revolucoes nos ambientes de ensino. Atualmente, sabe-se que nao mais se deve tratar alunos de forma homogenea, como se assim os fossem. Em face disso, este artigo apresenta um sistema adaptativo de apoio a aprendizagem colaborativa, cujo tema e a construcao e representacao do conhecimento por meio de mapas mentais multimidia. Tal sistema, baseia-se na Teoria da Carga Cognitiva, cuja preocupacao primaria e a facilidade com a qual as informacoes sao processadas pelos individuos.

An agent-based infrastructure for the support of learning objects life-cycle

This work presents the MILOS infrastructure. This infrastructure will implement the functionalities needed to create, manage, search, use and publish learning objects compatible with OBAA metadata proposal. MILOS project starts from several innovative assumptions, integrating agent and ontology technologies to support the adaptability, interoperability and accessibility requirements specified by OBAA. This work shows the assumptions of MILOS project, and the main elements of its architecture.

An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) view on AOSE

The creation of Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) applications involves tasks that require the modelling of complex agents (i.e., human students); therefore, a cognitive agency approach is more appropriate than a weak agency approach. ITS applications need to know, plan and understand several aspects of the other intelligent entities that inhabit the same environment. This is the viewpoint not considered in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies that this work intends to cover. This aspect is the main innovation of this work, and also presents a critical requirement that should be fulfilled by applications before someone tries to use the AOSE methods proposed here. In this context, the paper presents a set of AOSE methods derived from ITS research, which defines applicability criteria, designs principles and implementation guidelines to be applied in the software analysis, design and development process. The application of such methods is exemplified by several ITSs developed in our research group.

Formal analysis of a probabilistic knowledge communication framework

This paper introduces a new formal model, which generalizes current agent communication theories (basically the FIPA version of these theories) to handle probabilistic knowledge communication. Several questions about communication of probabilistic knowledge are discussed in the light of current theories of agent communication and it is argued that exists a semantic gap between these theories and research areas related to probabilistic knowledge representation and communication. This gap creates serious theoretical problems if agents that reason probabilistically try to use communication framework provided by these theories. To diminish this gap it is proposed a modal probabilistic logic and a new communication framework composed of communication principles and acts for probabilistic knowledge communication.

A Student Model for Teaching Natural Deduction Based on a Prover That Mimics Student Reasoning

Logic is a fundamental discipline for Computer Science, and Engineering students. However, despite its importance, there are several problems with the teaching of this discipline in graduate courses. Trying to improve this situation, we designed, and developed a new tutoring system for Logic, called Heraclito. This system implements a dynamic and adaptive student model, which is able to automatically solve the problems presented to students in a way similar to the employed by teachers, and, at the same time, is able to follow, and adapt itself to the form of reasoning used by students. The paper presents the main components of Heraclito’s student model, including the formal definition its similarity measurement function, and the similarity experiments conducted with Logic proofs generated by this system.

Formal Analysis of the Communication of Probabilistic Knowledge

This paper discusses questions about communication of probabilistic knowledge in the light of current theories of agent communication. It will argue that there is a semantic gap between these theories and research areas related to probabilistic knowledge representation and communication, that creates very serious theoretical problems if agents that reason probabilistically try to use the communication framework provided by these theories. The paper proposes a new formal model, which generalizes current agent communication theories (at least the standard FIPA version of these theories) to handle probabilistic knowledge communication. We propose a new probabilistic logic as the basis for the model and new communication principles and communicative acts to support this kind of communication.