International Journal of
Information and Education Technology

Abstract

Previous research on smart universities has generally focused on specific aspects such as educational technologies, connected infrastructure, or digital services, without offering a comprehensive view of the university as an integrated system. Consequently, these approaches provide a fragmented view of the university’s various components and the relationships between them. This study contributes to the literature by proposing a conceptual model based on the integration of various components of the smart university within a unified framework, structured according to the multi-agent systems approach. The framework was first established qualitatively through a review of the literature and subsequently examined quantitatively through an empirical survey. Seven domains were retained after examining their role in everyday academic and institutional activity: learner, teacher, pedagogy, classroom, administration, alumni, and extracurricular clubs. Each domain is represented as an agent following a common template adapted from existing work in smart city modelling, and the Smart Learner is detailed to show how inputs, internal states, and actions can be organized within this structure. A questionnaire distributed to learners, teachers, and administrative staff was used to examine whether these components reflect how stakeholders perceive the functioning of their institution. The questionnaire was used as a validation tool to assess the relevance of the proposed components and to verify their importance in a real-world context. The responses place learner, teacher, and pedagogy agents at the center of university activity, while still giving consistent importance to the remaining domains. Suggestions from participants also pointed to areas that are not always visible in formal models, such as student support or orientation services. The results support the choice of components and show that the model offers a coherent view of the university as a set of connected elements rather than isolated functions.