The AAMAS-2004 Workshop on

Teaching Multi-Agent Systems

held at the third international joint conference on Autonomous Agents & Multi Agent Systems (AAMAS-2004)

19 July 2004, New York City

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have reached a point where many people have become interested in being educated in MAS basics and specialities. So far, we find rather isolated attempts at providing help in teaching MAS. This workshop aims at bringing together researchers that are interested in the teaching aspect of the field to define core concepts of MAS that courses should provide and to inform each other about MAS-specific problems in teaching and MAS-specific tools that improve the learning experience of students.

We have been seeking contributions describing

• Positive and negative experiences in teaching MAS
  • on the undergraduate level
  • on the graduate level
  • in continuing education
• Problems specific to teaching MAS and possible solutions
• MAS-specific tools for teaching MAS

Contributions were be reviewed based on their quality, clarity of presentation, objective analysis of the reported experiences and novelty.

One of the obvious problems to solve in the area of MAS is what topics should be covered in a basic MAS course. While different people for sure will have rather different views concerning a complete course, nevertheless we expect a certain agreement on at least a few topics. What constitutes these core topics will be a central topic for discussions during the workshop. We therefore want to ask everyone who wants to participate in the workshop and/or discussions to send the organizers a short statement describing his/her expectations for a basic MAS course, with some indication of what the own research areas are. The organizers will analyze these statements and report on the spread of topics found during the workshop to start the discussion.

Workshop format

The workshop will be a mixture of submitted presentations and the open discussion about the core topics that should be covered in a MAS course.

Important dates

• Deadline for Submissions(both papers and expectation statements): April 1, 2004
• Invitations will be send out: May 1, 2004
• Camera-ready versions of contributions due: May 17, 2004
• Workshop: July 19, 2004

Workshop Program

The workshop will be on July 19, 2004, from 9:00 to 13:00. The program is as follows:     

9:00 - 9:10		Opening remarks
9:10 - 9:30		Jordan Kidney: Adding Competition into ARES: providing a more versatile platform for teaching multi-agent systems
9:30 - 9:50		Maria Fasli, Michael Michalakopoulos: Teaching Multi-agent Systems with Multi-agent Systems: Supporting Student Directed Learning and Interactive Assessmant
9:50 - 10:10		Hideki Hara, Kenji Sugawara, Tetsuo Kinoshita: Design of TAF for Training Agent-based Framework
10:10 - 10:30		Jose M Vidal, Paul Buhler, Hrishikesh Goradia: The Past and Future of Multiagent Systems
10:30 - 11:00		Coffee Break
11:00 - 11:20		Roberto A. Flores, Philippe Pasquier: Defining the scope of an introductory MAS course: A balancing act
11:20 - 11:40		Martin D. Beer, Richard Hill: Teaching Multi-Agent Systems in a UK New University
11:40 - 12:00		Andrew B. Williams: Teaching Multi-Agent Systems using AI and Software Technology
12:00 - 12:50		Discussion: Miminal content of a MAS course Problems in teaching MAS and possible solutions
12:50 - 13:00		Wrap-up

Organizing Committee

Jörg Denzinger (Contact) Department of Computer Science University of Calgary 2500 University Drive NW Calgary, Alberta Canada T2N 1N4 Phone: 1 403 220 5574 FAX: 1 403 284 4707 Email: denzinge@cpsc.ucalgary.ca	Gal A. Kaminka Computer Science Department Bar Ilan University Ramat Gan 52900 Israel Phone: +972 3 531 7233 FAX: +972 3 736 0498 Email: galk@cs.biu.ac.il
Yasuhiko Kitamura Department of Informatics Kwansei Gakuin University 2-1 Gakuen Sanda 669-1337 Japan Phone: +81 (79) 565-7774 FAX: +81 (79) 565-7774 Email: ykitamura@ksc.kwansei.ac.jp	Rainer Unland Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (ICB) University of Duisburg-Essen Schützenbahn 70 45117 Essen Germany Phone: +49 201-183 3421 FAX: +49 201-183 4460 Email: UnlandR@informatik.uni-essen.de