Domain independent strategies in an affective tutoring system

There have been various attempts to develop an affective tutoring system (ATS) framework that considers and reacts to a student’s emotions while learning. However, there is a gap between current systems and the theory underlying human appraisal models. The current frameworks rely on a single appraisal and reaction phase. In contrast, the human appraisal process (Lazarus, 1991) involves two phases of appraisal and reaction (i.e. primary and secondary appraisal phases). This thesis proposes an affective tutoring (ATS) framework that introduces two phases of appraisal and reaction (i.e. primary and secondary appraisal and reaction phases). This proposed framework has been implemented and evaluated in a system to teach Data Structures. In addition, the system employs both domain-dependent and domain-independent strategies for coping with students’ affective states. This follows the emotion regulation model (Lazarus, 1991) that underpins the ATS framework which argues that individuals use both kinds of strategies in solving daily life problems. In comparison, current affective (ITS) frameworks concentrate on the use of domain-dependent strategies to cope with students’ affective states. The evaluation of the system provides some support for the idea that the ATS framework is useful both in improving students’ affective states (i.e. during and by the end of a learning session) and also their learning performance

Resolving conflicts between personal and normative goals in normative agent systems

In this paper, we present a framework for resolving conflicts between personal and normative goals in normative agent systems. The conflicts occur in the decision making process of time-constrained tasks of those goals. The agents observe the environment, generate the tasks based on their obligation to an authority, their desires, and intentions. They select and execute the tasks from a set of pre-compiled tasks based on their beliefs of the reward and penalty associated with the selected tasks. To resolve the conflicts within the constraint of the tasks’ duration, we supplement the agents’ normative capacity with two essential functions: Sacrifice and Diligence. The Sacrifice function enables an agent to reason and discard any tasks that have lower priorities to make way for accomplishment of the normative goal. The Diligence function enables an agent to increase its effort in accomplishing the normative goal in time-constrained situations. We simulate these situations and present the results

A Review of Norms and Normative Multiagent Systems

Norms and normative multiagent systems have become the subjects of interest for many researchers. Such interest is caused by the need for agents to exploit the norms in enhancing their performance in a community. The term norm is used to characterize the behaviours of community members. The concept of normative multiagent systems is used to facilitate collaboration and coordination among social groups of agents. Many researches have been conducted on norms that investigate the fundamental concepts, definitions, classification, and types of norms and normative multiagent systems including normative architectures and normative processes. However, very few researches have been found to comprehensively study and analyze the literature in advancing the current state of norms and normative multiagent systems. Consequently, this paper attempts to present the current state of research on norms and normative multiagent systems and propose a norm’s life cycle model based on the review of the literature. Subsequently, this paper highlights the significant areas for future work

Building norms-adaptable agents from Potential Norms Detection Technique (PNDT)

This paper presents a contribution to research on norms detection by proposing a technique, which is called the Potential Norms Detection Technique (PNDT). The literature proposes that an agent changes or updates its norms based on the variables of the local environment and the amount of thinking about its behaviour. Consequently, any changes on these two variables cause the agent to use the PNDT to update the norms in complying with the domain’s normative protocol. This technique enables an agent to update its norms even in the absence of sanctions from a third-party enforcement authority as found in some work, which entail sanctions by a third-party to detect and identify the norms. The PNDT consists of five components: agent’s belief base; observation process; Potential Norms Mining Algorithm (PNMA) to detect the potential norms and identify the normative protocol; verification process, which verifies the detected potential norms; and updating process, which updates the agent’s belief base with new normative protocol. The authors then demonstrate the operation of the algorithm by testing it on a typical scenario and analyse the results on several issues

Can students' emotional states influence their assessment of lecturers' performance?

The Student Evaluation Form (SEF) is commonly used to assess lecturers’ teaching performance in the classroom. However, there are concerns that events that elicit emotion, such as students’ grades, could influence their assessment of their lecturers’ performance. Thus, we conducted a study to explore the effect of emotion-eliciting events on students’ emotional states and their assessment of lecturers’ performance. A random sample of 69 low- and high-ability students (26 control-group students and 43 experimental-group students) from Universiti Teknologi MARA, Johor, participated in this study. Two sets of questionnaires were used: the Positive and Negative Affect Scale and the SEF. The findings of the study indicate that especially for those with low ability, emotion-eliciting events affected students’ emotional states and their assessment of their lecturers’ performance

Integrating domian-independent strategies into an emotionally sound affective framework for an intelligent tutoring system

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Norms detection and assimilation in multi-agent systems: a conceptual approach

In this paper, we propose a technique for a software agent to detect the norms of a community of agents and assimilate its behaviour to comply with the local normative protocol, failing which, the agent is refused services and resources. In this technique, the software agent is equipped with an algorithm, which detects and analyzes the normative interactions between local agents. When the detection is successful, it launches another algorithm to request for its assimilation to the local normative protocol, indicating its acceptance by the group of local agents