Facilitating Group Learner Participation using Intelligent Agents in Collaborative M-Learning

Most Leaning Management Systems provide a facility for online group discussions. Grouping members together does not give a surety of their participation in those online discussions. However, intelligent agents can facilitate group participation to motivate members to participate effectively in group discussions leading to enhanced levels of group knowledge construction. This paper discusses an experimental design for evaluating agent-based facilitated group learner participation for online group discussions in mobile learning environments. The experiment uses two treatment groups and one control group. We compared the levels of group knowledge construction amongst the three groups. The findings showed improved levels of group knowledge construction in the treatment groups compared to the control group. Thus, we recommend the use of intelligent agents in facilitating group participation and subsequently improving the group knowledge construction in collaborative m-learning.