In this course, students will work in small teams to build Adaptive Learning Guides -- smart interactive characters that offer personalized one-to-one assistance to online learners, while engaging them with vivid personas and social warmth.

Sample projects include:

• An Art Guide who takes learners on interactive tours of masterpieces on the Web sites of the National Gallery of Art and the Louvre.
• A Fitness Guide who helps learners develop healthy eating and exercise habits.
• A Genealogy Guide who helps computer novices find and organize genealogical data on the Internet.
• A Foreign Language Guide who helps students practice their foreign language conversation skills.
• A Backpacking Guide who shows people what to pack, where to go, and how to hike intelligently.
• An Astronomy Guide who teaches children about the solar system and the planets.

Since our project teams will require interdisciplinary skills, we welcome motivated students from computer science, education, art, symbolic systems, communications, psychology, English, drama, and other departments. We will use development tools that allow scripting of interactive dialogue, gestures, feelings, and gestures by non-technical contributors, as well as software integration and other back-end extensions by more technical contributors.

The final product of our course will be complete Learning Guides, permanently hosted on a Web site where people can interact with them.

Note: This course is a sequel to CS377E, Design of Adaptive Learning Guides, but that course is not required to take this one.