Activities

TEACHING AND TRAINING AGENTLINK II

This component of AgentLink's activities is coordinated by Wiebe van der Hoek.

The main aim of this workpackage is to promote excellence in the teaching and training of agent-related issues throughout the European region. In order to realise this aim, the following programme of work
will be carried out:

Agent systems summer schools

A centerpiece of AgentLink's teaching and training activities was the establishment of a summer school. This first of these summer schools took place in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in July 1999, and offered 18 courses on all aspects of agent technology, delivered by the very best international lecturers. About 40 AgentLink members were funded to attend, and no less than 120 other paid registrations were received, from both industry and academia. This made the 1999 summer school easily the largest agent teaching event ever, and AgentLink will continue to build on this success by developing regular summer schools (at least every two years, with actual scheduling
informed by experience and demand) with the same model. Courses will be presented by international experts, from both inside and outside Europe. Support will be provided to fund travel, accommodation, and subsistence for both lecturers and a limited number of students. As with the 1999 summer school, additional attendance will be encouraged, and a fee charged for such attendees, with the ultimate goal of making the summer schools self-financing. Where possible, lecture materials will subsequently be made available via the Agentlink WWW site.
The Second European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS'00) was hosted in Germany and the Third European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS'01) was held in Prague from July 1-13, 2001. The Fourth European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS'02) will take place in Bologna in JUly 2002, the week preceeding the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

Curricula database for agent-related teaching.

To encourage the teaching of agent-based computing, AgentLink has established a WWW-based database of agent teaching materials and curricula, covering all aspects of agent-based
computing. Each curriculum summarises the teaching aims of the course, teaching plans, and pointers to reading material. AgentLink will continue to build and refine this database.