Role-Play Training for Project Management Education Using a Mentor Agent

Role-play training is an effective method for project management education. We have provided a role-play training environment based on online - group-work training to develop student´s human elated skills: communication, negotiation and leadership. However students could not share the required information adequately with other students to make a decision about a trouble encountered in a virtual project. In order to cope with this problem, we have developed a software agent system which can play a role of a mentor and an adviser. The system is implemented in cooperation with the online-group-work training system. The agent guides students to progress role-play, and instructs a way of project management. The agent allows learners to consider interest of a stakeholder, have sense of ownership, and share information required to correctly make a decision. This paper presents the structure of the agent system and the effectiveness of the agent in role-play training for project management education.