At the end of November, Sophie McGown Customer Success Manager at D2L, ran some sessions with BU staff providing a more detailed look at one of Brightspace’s most powerful tools; Intelligent Agents. Sophie shared some best practice and top tips before assisting staff in building and scheduling Intelligent Agents to run on their units.
What are Intelligent Agents?
The Intelligent Agent tool assists instructors and administrators by providing an automated notification when a pre-defined activity occurs (or doesn’t occur) on a unit. Sophie presented several use cases, such as monitoring when students last logged into a unit, or motivating students by congratulating them on their engagement with unit content or improved assessment scores. Intelligent Agents save you time and boost interaction with your learners.
Why use Intelligent Agents?
Setting up an Intelligent Agent on your unit means customised emails can be sent out automatically to students. Emails are sent from the system (Brightspace), however they can be configured to come from a personal account and when combined with replace strings the email is addressed to named individuals, making the student experience more personal. You can also use them as a reporting tool; running them manually or emailing results directly to yourself rather than out to students. An agent will only take a few minutes to set up but then they work on their own in the background for as long as required.
Where can I find out more?
Intelligent Agents Quick Reference Guide
Intelligent Agents Templates
Or contact your Lead Faculty Learning Technologist:
- FM: fmlearningtechnology@bournemouth.ac.uk
- HSS: hsslearningtechnology@bournemouth.ac.uk
- FMC: fmclearningtechnology@bournemouth.ac.uk
- FST: scitechlearningtechnology@bournemouth.ac.uk
Katayoun Abbasirad, David Hunt, Tracey Webb 
