ABSTRACT
Our vision of the future is to have conversational agents on computers guide all phases of instruction, learning, formative assessment, and testing. The learner will be holding conversations in natural language with multimedia communication channels, just as they have interacted with teachers and mentors for centuries. Unlike teachers, the computer agents will be available 24/7 on the Web. Unlike teachers, computers will be capable of supplying a massive amount of up-to-date information at all scales of depth and breadth. Unlike teachers who manage large classrooms, the computer agents will tailor the conversation and educational experiences to the individual learners. Will the learner become socially detached? Not at all, because the learners will be interacting with a society of other human agents and cyber agents that function as peers, team members, game players, coworkers, teachers, and mentors. Will teachers become extinct? Not at all, because they will be spending more time learning new material, augmenting their expertise, preparing new lessons and assessor facilities with authoring tools, and interacting with students at the deepest depths of knowledge, passion, and wisdom that computers may never achieve.
