Using Chatbots for Network Management Training through Problem -based Oriented Education Michelle Denise Leonhardt, Liane Tarouco, Rosa Maria Vicari, Elder Rizzon Santos and Michele dos Santos da Silva Instituto de Informática – Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFGRS) POBox 15064 – 90501-970 – Porto Alegre – RS – Brazil. Phone/Fax: +55 51 33086161 {mdleonhardt,liane,rosa,ersantos,mssilva}@inf.ufrgs.br Abstract This work presents an investigation of the use of ChatBots as a tool for network management training, through the use of the Problem-based Oriented (PBO) approach. Network management can be defined as the act of initializing, monitoring and modifying the operation of the functions that directly support the user requirements. Managing the current heterogeneous networks requires the collection of large quantities of data from the network; data that must then be analyzed before a management activity is initiated. Due to this fact, this domain represents an opportunity for using the PBO approach in education. In our approach, we have created Dorothy, a network management-aware ChatBot that is able to interact not only with the user, but also with the managed network via management protocols. 1. Introduction One of the key aspects in network management is that, in case of a problem, a solution has to be quickly found. The fault has to be diagnosed and automatically fixed or a human operator needs to be informed and advised about the proper sequence of actions. This work addresses the above issue through the investigation of the use of ChatBots as a network management training tool that is used to teach less experienced users. A ChatBot (also referred in this paper as bot) is a program that attempts to simulate typed conversation, with the aim of, at least temporarily, fooling a human into thinking the human is talking to another person. In our approach, we have created network management-aware ChatBot, Dorothy, that is able to interact not only with the network administrator, but also with the managed network via management protocols such as SNMP [2]. The SNMP network management architecture contains four key elements: Network Management Station (NMS), managed elements, Management Information Base (MIB), and the protocol used to exchange messages. Managed objects are devices such as computers, routers, and terminal servers. To be able to manage these elements, agents are necessary. Agents are software modules that reside in network elements. They collect and store management information such as the number of error packets received by a network element. The MIB is basically a database of managed objects that resides on the agent. A Network management Station hosts the network management application. It contains one or more processes that communicate with the agents in the network by sending commands and getting responses. The goal of this research is to provide a more feasible and effective tool to act between the less experienced administrator and the managed network because the unexperienced administrator does not need to know all the management protocol details to manage the underlying network. Moreover, this model suggests a tutoring approach centered in the user, making possible the application of the knowledge acquired in real problems and also the growth of the comprehension of the user by using the PBO approach (also know as troubleshooting). Troubleshooting is predominately a cognitive task that includes the search for causes of faults through a problem space of possible causes [8]. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents the related research; section 3 presents the ChatBot we have developed in our investigation. Finally, in section 4 we discuss the effectiveness of our approach and present some concluding remarks. 2. Related Research Athanasou and Cornford’s [3] research point to the fact that the ways in wich expert workers differ from novices is principally in the amount of specific skills that they posess and how they organize their knowledge. Also, they present the formal classification for different levels of expertise in people. Even though (in this work) we are not interested in the formal classification of the levels of skills and knowledge of network administrators, we can consider the fact that the tool proposed in this work helps the transition between these levels because it helps to develop user expertise by applying the PBO approach through problem solving methods and troubleshooting. The ability to solve problems requires a lot of knowledge and capacities from people who needs to deal with a complete range of information to be able to increase expertise to diagnose and take correct actions dealing with problems. Jonassen and Hung’s research [4] presents troubleshooting as a common form of problem solving. They propose an architecture for learning environments for troubleshooting (TLEs) composed of three parts: system model, simulator, and Seventh IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2007) 0-7695-2916-X/07 $25.00 © 2007