Software systems to support students working on team projects

In this paper an agent system is described which has been designed to support students undertaking team projects as part of their studies on campus. Team projects form an important part of the learning process for students in the Information Systems Institute. The particular problems of working on projects in teams are explored, and taking an action research approach, a system was designed to support some of the maintenance tasks of team working. Agent technology is suggested because of the ease of communication between software agents and their autonomy in operation, bringing together intelligent reasoning and communication across networks. The system has been tested on student teams, and the results discussed in terms of modifications for a future prototype.

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