Web services for an Intelligent tutoring system that operates as a virtual reality game

This paper describes the conversion of an existing standalone, multi-agent, intelligent tutoring system (ITS) to one that can operate trough the Internet. The particular ITS works as a virtual reality game and is meant to help students learn by providing them a more motivating environment and tutoring help. The system has three agents that have explicit roles. The companion that gives friendly advice, the advisor that provides help and the guard that asks the questions. In order to achieve the goal of the conversion we used a new technology, that of the Web services which has proved very satisfactory for the purposes of our research. We describe the conversion of our standalone multi-agent application to a web-based one, and we discuss the benefits of web services for the purposes of educational software.