[agents] AIED Workshop on Simulated Learners (apologies for multiple posting)

[John Champaign]

Below is a preliminary Call for Papers for a workshop on Simulated
Learners to be held in conjunction with the upcoming AIED conference
in Memphis this July.  We are soliciting papers on simulated learners
and simulated learning environments, either technical or
issue-oriented.  The deadline is April 12, 2013.  We want to create an
exciting workshop at the conference and through the workshop
proceedings stimulate wider debate in the community.

Cheers,
    Gord McCalla and John Champaign, Workshop Co-Chairs

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Call for Papers

AIED Workshop

Simulated Learners

in conjunction with AIED 2013
July 2013
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A.

This workshop is intended to bring together researchers who are
interested in simulated learners, whatever their role in the design,
development, deployment, or evaluation of learning systems.  Its novel
aspect is that it won’t just be a workshop about pedagogical agents,
but will also be concerned about other roles for simulated learners in
helping system designers, teachers, instructional designers, etc.  As
learning environments become increasingly complex and are used by
growing numbers of learners (sometimes in the hundreds of thousands)
and apply to a larger range of domains, the need for simulated
learners (and simulation more generally) is compelling, not only to
enhance these environments with artificial agents, but also to explore
design issues using simulation that would be otherwise too expensive,
too time consuming, or even impossible using human subjects.

Some Questions
The workshop aims to be broadly integrative across all possible roles
for simulated learners. Can research into one role inform issues
affecting the other roles?  In particular, can the lessons learned in
building pedagogical agents, the main strand of simulated learner
research, provide useful insight into other strands, and vice versa?
Among the many questions and issues that could be discussed, here are
a few important ones:
• how can simulated learners be deployed to support better learning
environments?
• how much cognitive fidelity with real learners do simulated learners
need to have? when is cognitive fidelity needed and when is it not?
• what advantages do simulated learners provide in comparison to real
learners? what disadvantages?
• what is the role for entire simulated learning environments,
including simulated learners?
• can simulation perform a role in the design of learning environments
that is similar to the role of a wind tunnel in aircraft design?
• what pedagogical questions can be explored with simulated learners?
• what best practice and lessons learned have we achieved from
research into simulated learners?
• what are the major challenges in the development and use of
simulated learners?
• what are the most promising applications of simulated learners?
least promising?
• what are the most promising directions for research into simulated
learners? least promising?
• are there interesting ideas to draw on from the use of simulation in
other domains?

These questions and issues are not exclusive: the workshop solicits
papers, issue-oriented or technical, that touch on any theme involving
simulated learners.  Accepted papers will appear in the workshop
proceedings.  There will be a link from the AIED conference website
(http://aied2013.memphis.edu/) to the workshop, and there will also be
a summary page in the main AIED conference proceedings.

Program Committee
• Gord McCalla (University of Saskatchewan), co-chair; e-mail:
mccalla at cs.usask.ca
• John Champaign (University of Waterloo), co-chair e-mail:
jchampai at uwaterloo.ca
• Esma Aimeur (Université de Montréal)
• Gautam Biswas (Vanderbilt University)
• Tak-Wai Chan (National Central University of Taiwan)
• Robin Cohen (University of Waterloo)
• Ricardo Conejo (Universidad de Málaga)
• Evandro Costa (Federal University of Alagoas)
• Michel C. Desmarais (Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal)
• Sylvie Girard (Arizona State University)
• Lewis Johnson (Alelo)
• Yang Hee Kim (Utah State University)
• James Lester (North Carolina State University)
• Noboru Matsuda (Carnegie Mellon University)
• Kurt VanLehn (Arizona State University)
• Beverly Park Woolf (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Important Dates
• Paper submission deadline: April 12, 2013
• Notification of decision: TBA
• Camera-ready copy due: TBA
• Workshop date: TBA [July 9, 2013 or July 13, 2013]