Plenary Lecture

Models for Virtual Education Systems

Associate Professor Dana Simian
Faculty of Sciences
University Lucian Blaga of Sibiu
Romania
E-mail: dana.simian@ulbsibiu.ro

Abstract: The e-learning systems have gained increasing attention in recent years. A complex e-learning system is composed of several interacting autonomous agents. Our aim is to provide many models based on ant and wasp bahaviour for different components of a virtual learning environment where students interact through their computers and with the software agents in order to achieve a common educational goal. A Multi-Agent System consisting of autonomous, cognitive and social agents communicating by messages is used to provide a group decision support system for the learning environment. Learning objects are distributed in a network and have different weights in function of their relevance to a specific educational goal. The relevance of a learning object can change in time; it is affected by students’, agents’ and teachers’ evaluation. We have used an ant colony behavior model for the agents that play the role of a tutor and organizing the group-work activities for the students. Another component of the learning environment is an adaptive multiagent system for dynamic routing of the activities of students’ grants. The model we have introduced allows the assignment of activities in a grant, taking into account the specialization of students, their experience and the complexity of activities already taken. An adaptive method allows students to enter in this system for the first time. The system is changing dynamic, because both the type of activities and the students involved in the system change. The agents use wasp task allocation behavior, combined with a model of dominance hierarchy formation, to determine which activity of a set of grants should be accepted into a student’s queue, such that the execution time of every grant be respected and the number of students involved in these grants be maximized.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Dana Simian received the diploma. in engineering from the University of Sibiu, Romania, the diploma. in Mathematics - Informatics from the University Babes-Bolyai of Cluj-Napoca, Romania and the Ph.D. from Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj- Napoca, Romania. She graduated many courses in Computer Science. She is the head of the Department of Computer Science from the Faculty of Sciences, University Lucian Blaga of Sibiu, Romania. She has a great experience in algorithms and numerical methods for modelling and optimization. She published 15 books, more than 60 articles and participated in the editorial board of 22 scientific publications (proceedings of international conferences).
She organized 5 special sessions within WSEAS conferences and 2 international workshops on topics related to algorithms and computational techniques in modeling, approximation and optimization. She was a member of many scientific committees of international conferences.. She was plenary speakers in 3 international conferences. She is reviewer of many scientific publications. She was involved as director of many research grants. She has been included in “Who is Who in the World” in 2006 and in the “IBC Foremost Engineers of the World”, 2008.