Smart Learning Environments - A Multi-agent Architecture Proposal

Smart environments for learning can be considered being a new level of computer enhanced learning, with a number of new interesting facilities. The famous IST Advisory Group (ISTAG) Report started from 2001 a decade of various research initiatives in the rapidly growing area of ambient intelligence. It introduced also a smart environment example in the form of a scenario - Scenario 4: Annette and Solomon in the Ambient for Social Learning. That was a vision of a learning environment, based on a position that learning is a social process. The scenario certainly was a nice incentive for a number of new initiatives focused on more or less successful attempts to design and introduce various types of smart environments capable to support different aspects of learning process. As multi-agent systems are the most frequently used approach towards smart environments design in general, we are convinced that a really systematic approach towards reflecting all desirable functionalities of smart learning environments must be based on a well-designed multi-agent architecture. In the paper we intend firstly to map the recent state of the art in the area of smart environments designed for learning. Further on we wish to list the desirable functionalities of a smart environment for learning, and propose a multi-agent architecture capable of reflecting the functionalities of a smart environment similar to that described in the above mentioned scenario.