hellodannyliu / bazaar

Bazaar Conversational Agent Architecture

Bazaar Conversational Agent Architecture

Bazaar is a modular framework for designing multi-party collaborative agents that builds upon the earlier Basilica architecture (Kumar & Rosé, 2011). Bazaar plays host to a library of reusable behavioral components that each trigger a simple form of support. More complex supportive interventions are constructed by orchestrating multiple simple behaviors. It is a publically available architecture for orchestrating conversational agent based support for group learning inviting further work from a broad and creative community of researchers working on intelligent support for group learning. It is a powerful tool for facilitating research in collaborative learning. Its flexibility and simplicity mean it can be used to very rapidly develop platforms for investigating a wide range of important questions within the design space of dynamic support for collaborative learning. We have developed a number of such research platforms, and actively employ them in our learning studies both in classrooms and Massive Open Online Courses. As we continue to do so, we expect to discover ways in which the Bazaar architecture can be extended and refined.