Intelligent Agents allow instructors to generate reports and automate communication with students in regards to various tasks and activities completed on a Brightspace course site. Intelligent Agents can track criteria such as log-in activity, course activity, and any options offered by release conditions (learn more about Release Conditions from our Release Conditions in Brightspace documentation). While this can be helpful for keeping track of student activity in a large course, intelligent agents should not be misconstrued as a way to monitor student engagement within a course, as number of clicks or logins to a site does not necessarily mean increased engagement.
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The Intelligent Agents area can be accessed by clicking Course Tools on the navbar, and selecting Intelligent Agents from the drop-down menu. From here, new Intelligent Agents can be created for the course site. A good starting point when using Intelligent Agents is to start in the “Settings” area in the top right corner of the screen. In Settings, the default under Use the system defaults sets the Name that emails come from as the Brock University Brightspace Team and the Reply-to address for responses as edtech@brocku.ca. Be sure to set an appropriate Set custom values for this course, including Name that emails come from and Reply-To address for responses. These should reflect course and instructor specific information. Unlike other parts of messaging within Brightspace, the reply-to address is active and all responses will go to that address.
Click the New Agent button.
Choose a name for the agent.
Add a description and give the agent a category at your own discretion. Both are optional and used for organization purposes.
Enable the agent by checking the checkbox under Status.
Under Scheduling, choose whether the agent will run on a certain schedule, or have no schedule (the instructor chooses when to run it).
Select the criteria required for the agent to follow. Options are explained below:
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Select the Actions that the agent will take. There are options to set whether the agent records users who repeatedly meet the criteria, or whether it only tracks the first time someone meets the criteria, as well as the option to send an email to the user when the criteria is met.
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. The criteria can be set according to log in activity, course activity or release conditions:
Login Activity: This option refers to whether the student has logged into Brightspace LMS, not your course specifically. Enter the number of days since the student last logged into Brightspace before they receive an agent email.
Course Activity: This option refers to whether the student has accessed your course page in Brightspace. Enter the number of days a student can be inactive/active before they receive an agent email.
Release Conditions: Select this option if you want the intelligent agent to run only when the student meets certain requirements (e.g., student belongs to Group A, student receives 50% or less on Quiz 3, student receives a certain grade on a grade item, etc). Click the Browse button to search for any Release Condition you have already created. Click the Create button to program a new one. For more information about using Release Conditions in Brightspace, refer to our support site on Creating Release Conditions.
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Sending an email can help students understand what criteria they are meeting or not meeting in the course. If sending an email to students note that the To field should contain the replace string: {InitiatingUser} to have Brightspace autofill student’s email addresses who fit the criteria. It is also recommended to use a replace string in the address that will use the student’s first name: {InitiatingUserFirstName}. Including their last name can also be a separate replace string: {InitiatingUserLastName}. |
Click Save and Close to complete the agent.
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