u-TA: A ubiquitous teaching assistant using knowledge retrieval and adaptive learning techniques
Using mobile agents to assist students in virtual learning environments has become increasingly common for hands-on experiments. Although virtual learning environments provide mobile agents as a platform for services to learners, one type of mobile agent only serves in one course, bringing possible benefits to users. This study was conducted to use agent techniques to construct a ubiquitous teaching assistant (u-TA) for assisting students solve problems in laboratory courses. We gave the u-TA enhanced social skills so that it can reduce the burden on teachers. The proposed u-TA system consists of both Web-based and instant messenger-based (IM-based) interfaces, and the u-TA can learn from other agents by analyzing their dialogues. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the u-TA and the results show that the u-TA can assist students and share the TA's workload in courses. The experimental results also demonstrated that the u-TA has good communications ability; its two user interfaces can increase interactions with students.  2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 245255, 2013
knowledge retrieval mobile agent ubiquitous teaching assistant (u-ta) learning abilities instant messenger (im)