Teaching Negotiation Skills through Practice and Reflection with
Virtual Humans
Simulation, 82 (11):
685--701 (November 2006)DOI: 10.1177/0037549706075542
Abstract
Although the representation of physical environments and behaviors
will continue to play an important role in simulation-based training,
an emerging challenge is the representation of virtual humans with
rich mental models (e.g., including emotions, trust) that interact
through conversational as well as physical behaviors. The motivation
for such simulations is training soft skills such as leadership,
cultural awareness, and negotiation, where the majority of actions
are conversational, and the problem solving involves consideration
of the emotions, attitudes, and desires of others.The educational
power of such simulations can be enhanced by the integration of an
intelligent tutoring system to support learners' understanding of
the effect of their actions on virtual humans and how they might
improve their performance. In this paper, we discuss our efforts
to build such virtual humans, along with an accompanying intelligent
tutor, for the domain of negotiation and cultural awareness.
