The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

A voting-based agent system to support personalised e-learning in a course selection scenario

A voting-based agent system to support personalised e-learning in a course selection scenario
A voting-based agent system to support personalised e-learning in a course selection scenario
Agent technologies are a promising approach to solving a number of problems concerned with personalised learning due to the inherent autonomy and independence they provide for learners. The objective of this thesis is to find out whether a multiagent system could potentially replace a centralised infrastructure, and to explore the impact of agents taking different strategies. More specifically, our aim is to show how intelligent agent systems can not only form a good framework for distributed e-learning systems, but also how they can be applied in contexts where learners are autonomous and independent. The study also aims to investigate fairness issues and propose a simple framework of fairness definitions derived from the relevant literature.
To this end, a university course selection scenario has been chosen, where the university has many courses available, but has only sufficient resources to run the most preferred ones. Instead of a centralised system, we consider a decentralised approach where individuals can make a collective decision about which courses should run by using a multi-agent system based on voting. This voting process consists of multiple rounds, allowing a student agent to accurately represent the student’s preferences, and learn from previous rounds. The effectiveness of this research is demonstrated in three experiments. The first experiment explores whether voting procedures and multiagent technology could potentially replace a centralised infrastructure. It also explores the impact of agents using different strategies on overall student satisfaction. The second experiment demonstrates the potential for using multiagent systems and voting in settings where students have more complex preferences. The last experiment investigates how intelligent agent-based e-learning systems can ensure fairness between individuals using different strategies.
This work shows that agent technology could provide levels of decentralisation and personalisation that could be extended to various types of personal and informal learning. It also highlights the importance of the issue of fairness in intelligent and personalised e-learning systems. In this context, it may be said that there is only one potential view of fairness that is practical for these systems, which is the social welfare view that looks to the overall outcome.
Aseere, Ali
19e7b4b1-5115-484f-83a8-c732dcb344bc
Aseere, Ali
19e7b4b1-5115-484f-83a8-c732dcb344bc
Millard, David
4f19bca5-80dc-4533-a101-89a5a0e3b372

Aseere, Ali (2012) A voting-based agent system to support personalised e-learning in a course selection scenario. University of Southampton, Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences, Doctoral Thesis, 167pp.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

Agent technologies are a promising approach to solving a number of problems concerned with personalised learning due to the inherent autonomy and independence they provide for learners. The objective of this thesis is to find out whether a multiagent system could potentially replace a centralised infrastructure, and to explore the impact of agents taking different strategies. More specifically, our aim is to show how intelligent agent systems can not only form a good framework for distributed e-learning systems, but also how they can be applied in contexts where learners are autonomous and independent. The study also aims to investigate fairness issues and propose a simple framework of fairness definitions derived from the relevant literature.
To this end, a university course selection scenario has been chosen, where the university has many courses available, but has only sufficient resources to run the most preferred ones. Instead of a centralised system, we consider a decentralised approach where individuals can make a collective decision about which courses should run by using a multi-agent system based on voting. This voting process consists of multiple rounds, allowing a student agent to accurately represent the student’s preferences, and learn from previous rounds. The effectiveness of this research is demonstrated in three experiments. The first experiment explores whether voting procedures and multiagent technology could potentially replace a centralised infrastructure. It also explores the impact of agents using different strategies on overall student satisfaction. The second experiment demonstrates the potential for using multiagent systems and voting in settings where students have more complex preferences. The last experiment investigates how intelligent agent-based e-learning systems can ensure fairness between individuals using different strategies.
This work shows that agent technology could provide levels of decentralisation and personalisation that could be extended to various types of personal and informal learning. It also highlights the importance of the issue of fairness in intelligent and personalised e-learning systems. In this context, it may be said that there is only one potential view of fairness that is practical for these systems, which is the social welfare view that looks to the overall outcome.

Text
1myThesis_-Final-2012-2.pdf - Other
Download (2MB)

More information

Published date: July 2012
Organisations: University of Southampton, Electronics & Computer Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 344399
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/344399
PURE UUID: 543fc607-5362-4cc4-8d0e-3ed4b8e6a373
ORCID for David Millard: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7512-2710

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 18 Feb 2013 16:37
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:59

Export record

Contributors

Author: Ali Aseere
Thesis advisor: David Millard ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×