Social insects and mobile agents in a virtual university Available to Purchase

To view virtual universities as an extension of real universities and of distant learning Institutes, new concepts in the area of distributed systems and virtual universities are needed. Mobile agents satisfy many requirements of such a highly dynamic system. Originally, mobile agents were used as a workflow system for a virtual university. These autonomous entities must next generate dynamic workflows. Examining the behaviour of ants in different situations, some conclusions regarding the use of mobile agents can be drawn. This paper presents the new ideas of a joint research project and gives an overview of the problems that confront us.