Discusses pedagogical issues for intelligent agents to successfully serve as mentors for educational purposes. Examines broader issues about the nature or persona necessary for an intelligent agent as mentor, incorporating usability and human-computer interaction issues such as the anthropomorphic qualities of the agent and the social relationship…

This paper describes preliminary work on "Multiple Intelligent Mentors Instructing Collaboratively" (MIMIC), an intelligent Web-based agent environment for learning instructional design. The focus is on developing theoretical foundations of instructional design and instructional theory that form the foundation for systems development. In the…