Intelligent classroom information agent multimedia lab and visual guides for Datastructures II

Abstract

Our research focuses on the redesign of an undergraduate computer science course, Datastructures II. We are experimenting with the concept of intelligent classroom information agents (ICIA's) as a means to facilitate information and learning. It forces us to assign new roles to teachers, students and the Center for Technology in Education (CTE) staff as defined by the ICIA standard. What this implies is a drastic change in the negotiation process followed by the undergraduate agents and their peers. We emphasize a strict division between human agents and software agents, since only the former can perform real life (e.g. emotional cultural political) negotiations. The latter will remain as tools to motivate the exchange of ideas and data. Therefore, the first step in the educational process included the development of an automated lecture aid which makes extensive use of hypertext and a library style catalog of datastructure concept simulations, which we call Workplace. We are currently guiding and evaluating a cultural transformation process in which the students must re learn how to take in class notes and study with the aid of the software tools here described. We make extensive use of the Visual Basic and Visual C++ development systems, as well as of the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) framework.