Stacy C. Marsella & W. Lewis Johnson
A longer version of a paper to be presented at Intelligent
Tutoring Systems 98(ITS'98)
Abstract:
Teams of people operating in highly dynamic, multi-agent environments must learn to deal with rapid and unpredictable turns of events. Simulation-based training environments inhabited by synthetic agents can be effective in providing realistic but safe settings in which to develop the skills these environments require. However such training environments present a problem for the instructor who must evaluate and control rapidly evolving training sessions. We address the instructors' problem with a pedagogical agent called the PuppetMaster. The PuppetMaster manages a network of spy agents that report on the activities in the simulation in order to provide the instructor with an interpretation and situation-specific analysis of student behavior. The approach used to model student teams is to structure the state space into an abstract situation-based model of behavior that supports interpretation in the face of missing information about agent's actions and goals.