An intelligent and adaptive virtual environment and its application in distance learning

This paper presents an intelligent and adaptive virtual environment, which has its structure and presentation customized according to users' interests and preferences (represented in a user model) and in accordance with insertion and removal of contents in this environment. An automatic content categorization process is applied to create content models, used in the spatial organization of the contents in the environment. An intelligent agent assists users during navigation in the environment and retrieval of relevant information. In order to validate our proposal, a prototype of a distance learning environment, used to make educational content available, was developed.