A Multi-Agent Approach to Collaborate Knowledge Production

Knowledge creation or production in a distributed knowledge management system is a collaborative task that needs to be coordinated. A multi-agent architecture for collaborative knowledge production tasks is introduced, where knowledge-producing agents are arranged into knowledge domains or marts, and where a distributed interaction protocol is used to consolidate knowledge that is produced in a mart. Knowledge consolidated in a given mart can, in turn, be negotiated in higher-level foreign marts. As an evaluation scenario, the proposed architecture and protocol are applied to coordinate the creation of learning objects by a distributed group of instructional designers.