Intelligent Agents
What is an Intelligent Agent
The intelligent agents tool in Brightspace enables lecturers (or tutors) to personalise and automate emails to students. They are particularly useful to engage large cohorts of students, keeping them on track to complete learning activities and assignments. In addition, this tool can be used to set up automatic notifications for lecturers so they are alerted when students have (or have not) completed tasks or met specific criteria within a module.
Why use Intelligent Agents
Intelligent agents can be used to automate sending routine emails to students. Timely, focused emails can be very effective at keeping students on track with their learning leading to better completion levels of learning activities and assignments.
These automated emails can be triggered by pre-set criteria i.e. completion/incompletion of certain activities, for example;
- to increase lecturer (or tutor) presence in a module
- when a student does not log in to the Brightspace module for a certain period of time
- when a student logs in to a module for the first time they can be used to ‘welcome’ that student, setting out the expectations and advising how to get started
- to remind students to review learning materials (with the ability to link directly to resources) or to reinforce learning
- they can be used to notify students when they have not viewed some learning materials or completed a particular learning activity
- they can be used when a student does not submit an assignment a reminder email can be automatically sent
Practical Tip:
It is recommended that intelligent agents are used sparingly as they are most effective when used to communicate important messages. If a student receives repetitive emails, they will be less likely to read them. It is beneficial to consider using intelligent agents in conjunction with the other communication tools within Brightspace i.e., announcements, emails, discussions.
Creating Intelligent Agents
Follow these key steps to create an intelligent agent;
- The intelligent agents are available via module tools, create new by selecting new agent
- Determine if the agent will run only once or set frequency and schedule dates for running
- Name it, check it as enabled, set criteria (module activity log-in or create and attach a release condition (determine the condition type and details from the dropdown menu).
- Use the email fields to enter information about who the intelligent agent needs to send an email to. Enter your own email address if you wish to receive the emails yourself - this is useful as it allows you to get updates about what students are and are not doing in your module. You can also use a replace string {InitiatingUser} in the To-field if you want the intelligent agent to send the student an email. Add the subject.
- Choose HTML as the email format. Start the email, for example: Hello, {InitiatingUserFirstName}) and enter the message in the HTML-editor that you want students to receive. Save and close.
- Return to the agent list page and do a practice run. This allows you to test your agent without sending any emails. After the practice run you can see who met the criteria of the intelligent agent in the overview on the agent-list page.
Practical Tip
When creating an intelligent agent you can schedule when it runs but it will only run if the agent is enabled.
Learn More
The following are some useful and informative video tutorials from Brightspace on creating and using intelligent agents;
- Intelligent Agents - Create an Intelligent Agent - Instructor
- Intelligent Agents - Manually Run an Intelligent Agent - Instructor
- Intelligent Agents - Perform a Practice Run - Instructor
- Teaching Tips - Encourage Learners to Engage Using Intelligent Agents - Instructor
Brightspace Documentation pages on Intelligent Agents;