THE VIRTUAL TUTOR

Development of a Virtual Tutor within a Simulated Working Environment

Peter C. Pel

and Rob M. M. Kommeren

Peter Pel Productions, Burg. De Roocklaan 21, 4611 LB, Bergen op Zoom, The Netherlands

Q-Cumber Software & Services, Nieuwe Weg 6, 4861 PZ, Chaam, The Netherlands

Keywords: Simulation of Workplaces, Virtual Vocational Training, Intelligent Tutor, Webbased, Simulation Engine.

Abstract: A simulation engine will be presented through which interactive virtual vocational environments were

realized. In this simulation students could act as employees in a simulated company and as such gain

experience and skills for their future profession. The simulations that are based on this simulation engine are

simulations of practical situations that are being used in the secondary vocational education in the

department of economics in the Netherlands. For the past six years this system has been totally redesigned

and adapted to meet the requirements of the educational field. Now, thousands of users will be able to use

this new simulation environment through the internet. At this moment an intelligent tutoring system is

developed and will be tested. The simulation environment becomes now a full adaptive learning

environment. During the workshop a demonstration will be given, showing the different possibilities of the

system. Also the problems of filling the rules, decisions and content of the intelligent tutoring system will be

discussed.

1 INTRODUCTION

To prepare the students in the Dutch vocational

education system better on the real working

situation, the former BIT Foundation

developed

simulation environments for training practice in a

simulated workplace for economic and

administrative training.

In these environments the students could make

themselves familiar with a real workplace. Class-

rooms were transformed to business places with all

the real stuff and tasks.

Because it was very difficult to create a

continuous stream of communication with the outer

world, the BIT Foundation started working together

with Peter Pel in 1996 who developed a special

computer system, the simulation engine.

This simulation engine creates a virtual dynamic

interactive working environment, wherein the

communication with and feedback from the outer

world happens in a natural way, triggered by the

actions of the student.

Now divided and merged into the SPL Foundation and the

Engine Foundation.

2 PRIME CHARACTERISTICS

• Each student has his own ‘workplace’ in a

professional environment. There he or she plays

the role of an employee. That means that the

students have to behave themselves as if they

are working in a real company with all the rules

and agreements that belong to that company.

• The simulation environment gives possibilities

for the training of skills, competence and

attitude to work, all in a relative safe situation.

• In some of the environments the students will

work independently, in other environments they

work as a team. But in all cases they have the

experience that their actions do influence the

work of other (virtual) people and that the most

work is a reaction to the actions of others.

• The simulation environment consists of a lot of

more or less complex problem solving situations

which influence each other.

• A complete learning process will be offered by

creating sessions that are build on scenarios that

start simple and increase in complexity.

• Besides of the learning aspect there is also a

‘fun’ aspect.

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C. Pel P. and M. M. Kommeren R..

THE VIRTUAL TUTOR - Development of a Virtual Tutor within a Simulated Working Environment.

DOI: 10.5220/0003966601910194

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 191-194

ISBN: 978-989-8565-07-5

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

3 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

There are 7 educational principles that form the

foundation for the simulation engine:

• People are interested in, driven and guided by

real life, so therefore you must create a learning

environment that is similar to real life.

• Every learning starts with a problem situation. If

we can’t bring the student in a problem

situation, there will be no base motivation for

learning something. Therefore, we have to

create a learning environment with a great

variety of situations that need problem solving.

• For the learner it has to be his personal problem.

Nobody is inclined to solve the problems of

others. Therefore, we have to create a situation

where the student can identify him/herself with

the problem situation.

• In real life problems will never come on their

own. Most of our life can be typed as a multi

problem situation. Simple problems can be very

difficult when they are part of a more complex

situation. Often we will solve simple problems

in a completely different way because we are

also solving other problems. Therefore we have

to create a real life situation with a whole range

of problems.

• Problems only exist in a social context. If we

are just alone in this world there is no need to

solve anything! Thus, we must bring the

learning situation back to the basic social level.

• Faults don’t exist in real life. If you do

something you always have the idea that you do

the right thing. Nobody plans to do things

wrong. Only after we have learned that the

outcomes are not what we expected, we realize

that we have to act in another way next time.

Besides that, mostly the social environment

judges about the outcomes of your acting, and

often there isn’t one right outcome for everyone.

For a good learning outcome the students need

feedback in the way and at the moment it should

come in real life.

• Often students in vocational education lost their

interest in learning in a theoretical way.

Therefore we have to give learning more ‘fun’.

4 THE CLASSROOM AS

PROFESSIONAL WORKING

ENVIRONMENT

By bringing in the virtual simulation engine in the

former working environments build by the BIT

Foundation, it became possible to control the

dynamics and the communication with the outer

world. It also gave the opportunity to evaluate the

actions of the students in a real life way.

Figure 1: The classroom as working place.

5 THE STRUCTURE OF THE

SIMULATION ENGINE

The simulation package consists of a content free

modular program engine and a database system

which drives the program.

With a library of many different objects it is

possible to create any wished simulation

environment.

There are objects for creating the navigation

environment: i.e. rooms, corridors, objects for

filling the rooms with furniture and technical

equipment: bookcases, cupboards, objects for

communicating with the outer world: telephones,

mobiles, fax machines, objects for transportation and

navigation and all kind of simulated applications on

a simulated computer.

All these objects can interact with the central

part of the engine that generates events and can

receive the interactions with the objects by the

student.

The way the objects are presented in the user

interface for the student is specified by independent

environment files.

The most important part of the engine is the set

of scenario files which can be seen as the ‘musical

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score’ wherein the basic elements are defined for the

behaviour of the simulation environment.

It is not the software that drives the database, but

the database that drives the software.

6 THE DYNAMICS OF THE

EVENTS

The basic principle behind the simulation events is

the next scheme that is based on the interaction

between a sender and a receiver ( the student). Like

in real life when a person sends a letter ( or any

other kind of message) to another person, the sender

decides what he will do when he gets his desired

answer or what he will do when he doesn’t get an

answer.

Figure 2: The basic event type.

On the other side, the receiver will receive the

message at some moment. When it is a letter, it’s

delivery will take a day or longer, when it is an

email it will come in when he starts the computer,

when it is a phone call, it comes to him directly. But

he decides when and how he will answer. In reality

his answer can take too long and come to the sender

after the sender did another action.

After bringing in an third party, where the

student acts only as the person who gives the

message to another virtual receiver (like the situation

where the student acts as employee who divides the

incoming post for other colleagues), it was possible

to create variants on the basic event type based on:

who is communicating with who, who is the waiting

party, who has to remember what, etc.

After that, scenarios could be made by making

chains of the different basic event types.

A simulation session starts with a combination of

many different scenarios which play their in a

multitasking way. During initialisation of the

simulation session all the scenario definitions will be

filled in with different data based on certain

parameters. In fact, after the first second all virtual

participants will live their own life based upon their

private and unique scenarios and dependent of the

interaction with the student. The student will

experience this situation as complex as real life.

Figure 3: Chain of events.

Based on the described principles and simulation

engine, the BIT Foundation and nowadays SPL

build a lot of simulation environments for different

vocational training situations, like:

• bookkeeping, business-administration

• secretary

• banking, finance, insurance

• logistics, retail, wholesale trade

• IT

• vocational orientation

7 THE THIRD GENERATION

ENGINE

Over the last six years the whole simulation engine

has been rebuild. At this moment the new system is

implemented on one central server cluster where

about 10.000 students log in by internet and play

their simulation simultaneously. Teachers can see

the results on one place and can follow the actions of

the students. Developers are working together on

servers specific for development and fine tuning of

the simulations.

The system is more consequently divided in

three parts:

The database filled with

• All the details of persons, companies, articles, etc

• All the events and scenarios for the different

simulated environments

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• All ‘running’ events and data

• The data and history of all students

The engine

• The engine program is continuously creating,

scheduling and evaluating all events for all the

students for all the simulations

• 24 hours a day, 365 days a year

The client

• Each client has his ‘simbrowser’, a rich internet

browser with all the necessary objects and

resources to present the working environment

• The simbrowser communicates continuously

with the engine program and the database on the

server

With this 3rd generation engine it is possible to

build a worldwide learning system. Currently we are

exploring the possibility to build a 4th generation

completely based on web technology (HTML5 and

Javascript).

8 THE INTELLIGENT TUTOR

One of the main plans for this moment is to add a

intelligent virtual tutor to the system, who guides the

learners based on their behaviour and their results.

The Dutch vocational education is becoming

more and more individual: each student has his/her

own learning trajectory. Also, our simulations are

more and more used for training a specific learning

deficit. Therefore the need arises for a system that

guides the student to certain learning goals, using a

learning route that is ideal for that student.

To achieve this goal, an intelligent virtual tutor is

being developed, that can monitor the student within

the virtual learning environment, and present

him/her an ideal learning route.

This tutor can:

• Diagnose where mistakes are being made

• Analyze the learning deficits of the student

• Present new assignments specific for those

deficits

• Give advice and tips for the work involved

• Give the impression that someone is watching

over his/her shoulder and helping

Apart from that, the tutor is capable to adjust the

learning tempo and style to the capabilities of the

student.

Originally, the simulation engine was ment to

simulate ‘real practice’ so students could experience

the real world and could ‘learn by doing’. Now, the

possibility arises to use this virtual environment for

efficient training and learning routes. Every time the

student logs in, the system knows everything the

student has done in the past, and can pick up where

the student left off. Unnecessary steps are avoided.

Figure 4: Schematic overview learning route.

The contents of the tutor system is composed

with a tool that enables presenting learning material

in different ways and styles. It allows specifying

schematically different learning routes and maps.

The problem is mainly filling the contents of this

tutor system. The system can contain many

decisions and rules for following learning routes, but

this content will have to be specified by experts,

requiring analysis of learning processes based on

different learning principles.

Since every followed learning route and

corresponding results are stored in the database, the

engine becomes a powerful platform for scientific

analysis of learning in simulated practical

environments.

9 DISCUSSION

The virtual tutor system enables monitoring every

learning step and individual students following their

learning routes. A more scientific analysis of

achieved results is obvious, the test groups are

already stored in our database.

As the intelligent tutor is just as intelligent as the

rules it uses, it becomes more important to use

didactic analysis on learning material and to use

multiple learning principles within the system.

The authors would like to discuss with

colleagues in this working area about the problems

and challenges this brings forth.

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