1105 Chapter 2.29 Intelligent Agents Supporting Distributed Collaborative Learning Weiqin Chen University of Bergen, Norway Barbara Wasson University of Bergen, Norway Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ABSTRACT In the context of distributed collaborative learning, it is usually difficult for students to be aware of others’ activities and for instructors to overview the process and regulate the collaboration. In or- der to facilitate collaborative learning, intelligent agents were developed to support the awareness and regulation of the collaboration. This chapter discusses the facilitation role of intelligent agents and how they support students and instructors in distributed collaborative-learning environments. By monitoring the collaboration, the agents com- pute statistics, detect possible problems, and give advice synchronously and asynchronously to the students and instructor based on their activities and requests. In so doing, the agents not only help students to self-regulate their activities but also help instructors to maintain an overview of the collaboration so that they can intervene when necessary. INTRODUCTION Agent technology has been used in educational environments for some time, and a number of agents and multiagent systems have been de- signed specifically for educational purposes. In these systems, agents play different roles, such as tutors (Johnson et al., 2000) or co-learners (Chan, 1996). Another role for an agent is that of a facilitator (Chen & Wasson, 2003). For example, in a distributed collaborative-learning environ- ment where users are geographically distributed