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Los Angeles (LA) Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Technical Activity Committee on Artificial Intelligence (TACART)

             TACART

TOPIC:       Virtual Pedagogical Agents

SPEAKER:     Prof. W. Lewis Johnson
             Information Sciences Institute
             University of Southern California

DATE:        19 February 1997 (Wednesday night)

TIME:        The talk will begin at 7:30.

PLACE:       Loyola Marymount University, Pereira Hall 27
             LMU is located at Loyola Blvd. and 80th Street in
             Westchester. From the 405, take the Manchester exit
             and proceed west to Loyola Blvd.  Turn north, and
             continue until you enter the LMU campus.  Ask the
             guard for directions to Pereira Hall. Parking is free.

ABSTRACT:    In order for a virtual environment to be effective as a
             training tool, it is not enough to concentrate on the
             fidelity of the renderings and the accuracy of the 
             simulated behaviors.  The environment should be designed 
             in such a way that it helps the trainees develop an 
             an understanding of the task being trained, and should
             provide guidance and assistance as needed. This talk
             describes a system for developing virtual environments
             for training in which pedagogical capabilities are
             incorporated into autonomous agents that interact with 
             the trainees.  These pedagogical agents can monitor the 
             trainees' progress, and provide guidance and assistance.  
             The agents interact with simulations of objects in the 
             environment, and with trainees.  Prof. Johnson will describe 
             the architectural features of the environment and of the
             and of the agents that permit the agents to meet instructional 
             objectives within the virtual environment,  and discuss how 
             agent-based instruction is combined with other methods of 
             delivering instruction.

BIOGRAPHY:   Dr. Johnson is Research Associate Professor, Computer Science
             and Project Leader, Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at
             the University of Southern California (USC).  He heads the
             Educational Technology Group at USC/ISI, which is developing
             technologies to support training, education, and life-long
             learning.  He is principal investigator of numerous projects.
             Major ones are: Virtual Environments for Training, Media-Doc,
             and Automated D`istance Education. Dr. Johnson received his  
             A.B. degree in Linguistics in 1978 from Princeton University,
             and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Yale 
             in 1980 and 1985, respectively.  He is Chair of the ACM Special 
             Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (SIGART), a member of 
             the Executive Committee of the AI-ED Society, and of the
             Steering Committee of the Knowledge-Based Software Engineering
             Conference.  He is also chair of the First International
             Conference on Autonomous Agents, and co-editor-in-chief of the 
             journal Automated Software Engineering.

DINNER:      No dinner is planned.  No social activities are planned.
NEWSGROUPS:  Announced in comp.ai, la.seminars, ca.seminars.
HOMEPAGE:    can be reached from the chapter page http://www.acm.org/~lac
CONTACTS:    L. Andrew Campbell campbell@aero.org (310) 336-8642 or
             Program Chair Barney Toma tomab@ecn.com (310) 323-8451.
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| L. Andrew Campbell     internet: campbell@aero.org       |
| M1-102 PO Box 92957    organization: The Aerospace Corp. |
| Los Angeles CA 90009   telephone: (310) 336-8642         |