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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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titleClick here to view Critera Options

Criteria Options

Role in Classlist - Instructors can choose whether the agent checks every person in the classlist, or can specify a role for the agent to check (i.e., every student in the class or every TA).

Take Action on Activity - This is where instructors decide what they are having the agent check and report on. The two main options are Login Activity and Course Activity.
Login Activity refers to when a user last logged into Brightspace.
Course Activity refers to when a user last visited the specific course site the agent is in.

Release Conditions - On top of login and course activity, agents can track progress in specific areas of the site by making use of Release Conditions. For example, agents can be paired with the No submission to folder release condition to gather a report of students who haven’t submitted to a particular assignment. To learn more about Release Conditions and their options, please see Release Conditions in Brightspace

  1. 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. The criteria can be set according to log in activity, course activity or release conditions:

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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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titleDetails on Sending an Email as the Action Item

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}.

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titleSending emails based on Grade Items to identify students who may be struggling and zero grades.

If identifying students who may be struggling or potentially at risk of not meeting program standards, including those with zero grades, it is important to have zeroes entered in the grade item. If the gradebook is set to Treat all ungraded items as zero please note that the zero is visual and not entered as data. All grades must be entered in the Enter grades field or in the assessment tool (Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes). If, however a student has a known exception they should not receive the message, ensuring that the grade is a “-”, that the grade field for that student is empty or null will ensure they do not receive the message.

  1. Click Save and Close to complete the agent.

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