Toward inquiry-based education through interacting software agents

Author

Atkins, Daniel E. ; Birmingham, William P. ; Durfee, Edmund H. ; Glover, Eric J. ; Mullen, Tracy ; Rundensteiner, Elke A. ; Soloway, Elliot ; Vidal, José M. ; Wallace, Raven ; Wellman, Michael P.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Volume

29

Issue

5

fYear

1996

fDate

5/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

69

Lastpage

76

Abstract

The University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) project is creating an infrastructure for rendering library services over a digital network. When fully developed, the UMDL will provide a wealth of information sources and library services to students, researchers, and educators. Tasks are distributed among numerous specialized modules called agents. The three classes of agents are user interface agents, mediator agents, and collection interface agents. Complex tasks are accomplished by teams of specialized agents working together-for example, by interleaving various types of search. The UMDL is being deployed in three arenas: secondary-school science classrooms, the University of Michigan library, and space-science laboratories. The development team expects the scale and diversity of the project to test their technical ideas about distributed agents, interoperability, mediation, and economical resource allocation

Keywords

academic libraries; cooperative systems; full-text databases; information retrieval; library automation; open systems; software agents; UMDL; University of Michigan Digital Library project; University of Michigan library; collection interface agents; digital network; distributed agents; economical resource allocation; information sources; inquiry-based education; interacting software agents; interoperability; library services; mediation; mediator agents; secondary-school science classrooms; space-science laboratories; user interface agents; Computer architecture; Databases; Educational institutions; Humans; Resource management; Software agents; Software libraries; Stress; User interfaces; Web sites;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computer

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9162

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/2.494084

Filename

494084