Would you like to send your students a welcome to the course email, or congratulate your students for a job well done or give them a nudge when they might need to work harder -- without having to do a lot of extra work to make it happen? The Brightspace Intelligent Agents tool can help automate this process for you.
Intelligent Agents allow instructors to delegate some of the course communication and notification tasks to the system, based on specific triggering activities in the course. Intelligent Agents can be used to both recognize student achievement and warn of potential problems. For example, you can use Intelligent Agents to:
- Check for users that have not logged into the course
- Check for users that have not logged in within a specific number of days
- Notify users with grades below a certain level
- Congratulate users with grades above a certain level
- Check for users that view a specific content topic
The automatic notifications that are generated when specified course performance criteria are met can be sent to instructors, advisors, and/or students.
NOTE: Last month's Continuous Delivery Update added new features to the Intelligent Agent Create Agent page to facilitate additional scheduling options and frequency options to allow for improved flexibility. Changes to the Create Agent page include:
- Two new agent frequency options:
- One-Time Run allows instructors to choose a single date and time to run.
- Hourly allows instructors to choose a date and time to run between. If no dates are chosen, the Hourly agent runs every hour with the first time being "now" (that is once the agent is saved and enabled).
- The existing Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Annually options all now have a Scheduled Time option that users complete to determine what time that the agent will run on the dates scheduled for the agent to run.
Repetitive emails may lose their effectiveness, so use Intelligent Agents sparingly. Consider using Intelligent Agents when there isn't a better way of communicating. Ask yourself,
- Would an announcement work better?
- Would a personally crafted email work better?
- Would a discussion board posting work better?
If the answer is no, then consider using an Intelligent Agent!
Follow these steps to do it.
To create an Intelligent Agent:
- On a course NavBar, click Course Admin.
- Click Intelligent Agents.
- On the Agent List page, click New Agent.
- On the New Agent page, enter a name.
- Enter a description into the Description field.
- If you want to assign a category to the agent, select an option from the Category drop-down menu or create a new category by clicking the Add Category link.
- If you want the agent to be active, select the Agent is enabled check box.
- Expand Scheduling, and under Frequency schedule how frequently agent criteria is evaluated. Choose a frequency option from the dropdown menu and complete the schedule dates and repetition options as needed.
- Expand Criteria, and under Role in Classlist do one of the following:
- If you want the Intelligent Agent to be applicable to all roles in the Classlist, select the All users visible in the Classlist check box.
- If you want the Intelligent Agent to be applicable to select roles, select the Users with specific roles check box and select the respective roles.
- Select your criteria (login activity, course activity, or attach Release Conditions).
- Under Actions > Repetition, select how often you want the agent to take action.
- If you want the agent to send an email when the set criteria are satisfied, expand Actions, and under Send an Email, select the Send an email when the criteria are satisfied check box and enter your email details and relevant attachments.
- Click Save and Close.
NOTE: You can perform a practice run or a manual run of an Intelligent Agent at any time in a course.
Want more information?
Intelligent Uses of Intelligent Agents
Intelligent Agents Tool Quick Reference Guide (pdf)
How to Set Up an Intelligent Agent
Create an Intelligent Agent (video)
Delete and Restore Intelligent Agents (video)
Perform a Practice Run for an Intelligent Agent (video)
Manually Run an Intelligent Agent (video)
Brightspace Tip #237: Release Conditions
View all the Brightspace training recaps
Instructors Quick Start Tutorial
Continuous Delivery release notes
Brightspace Known Issues
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You can find Brightspace help at D2L's website.
Join the Brightspace Community.
Try these Brightspace How-To documents.
Visit our Brightspace FAQs for additional Brightspace information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
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