HAPA: Harvester and Pedagogical Agents in E-learning Environments

In the field of e-learning and tutoring systems two categories of software agents are of the special interest: harvester and pedagogical agents. This paper proposes a novel e-learning system that successfully combines both of these agent categories and introduces two distinct sub-types of pedagogical agents helpful and misleading. Whereas helpful agents provide the correct guidance for the given problem, misleading agents try to guide the learning process in the wrong direction by offering false hints and inadequate solutions. The rationale behind this approach is to motivate students not to trust the agent's instructions blindly, but to employ critical thinking. Consequently, students will be put in a "softly stressed" environment in order to prepare them for real working environments in their future work in companies. Nevertheless students themselves will decide on the correct solution to the problem in question.