A design approach for agents in distributed work and learning environments

This paper presents an approach for designing facilitators as interface agents in collaborative learning and work environments. As some researchers already have commented, too little effort has been focused on researching human agent interaction, and how presentation techniques can be developed to mediate agent output more successfully (Dickinson, 1998). A lot of research has been done in the field of animated pedagogical agents. Research in this field is occupied with capabilities such as eye movements, hand gestures and user - agent conversations. In these settings agents tend to be a crucial part of the interface, and interacting with the agent can be time consuming. The authors argue that such techniques might not prove successful in collaborative learning and work environments, especially in scenarios imposing a heavy workload on the participants. In contrast, they propose a different design approach so agents can become less intrusive. This will hopefully leave the learners with time to do their needed collaborative work.