Using Pedagogical Agents to Support the Formation of Synthetic Communities of Practice

Baker College, Flint MI

Use of APA and conversational agents to support formation of CoP when there are insufficient humans

CoP

KM tool for various enterprises
- preserve knowledge
- distribute
- integrate and teach new practitioners
- solve hard problems by maintaining state-of-the-art
- usually long term social structures, not always
three structural elements (Wenger, McDermott and Snyder 2002)
- domain
- community
- practice

CoP formation possibilities

Face-to-face
- classmates
- project group members
- can last for duration of a program
synchronous online
- project group members
- study group members
- can last for duration of program, but not likely
asynchronous online
- online discussion postings
  - disconnected by time
- usually only lasts for duration of a class

Synthetic CoP

membership
- one or more students
- conversational agents
- pedagogical agents
structure
- scaffolded by agents with fixed or varying roles
duration
- possible career
- transcends program boundaries
- life long learning, not going to turn off access
tasks, responsibilities
- legitimate peripheral participation
- progression towards greater integration in community

More than fancy intelligent tutoring, more than virtual social network

Instructor is a “tacit” member of community, can continue to upgrade agent knowledge, integrate new practices from the field, etc.

Community coordinator

tasks
- issue identification in the domain
- event planning and facilitation
- linkage of community members
- development of community members
- managing relationship between community and organization
- build practice
- monitor and assess community health
agent coordinator is not appropriate for all tasks
- so they cheat
- split responsibilities between human and agent
  - human
    - domain issue identification

Target SCoP on Baker Island (SL)