Intelligent Agents are one of Brightspace’s most powerful tools. They can be used to delve into unit analytics and enhance the student experience by providing immediate, personalised feedback by email. And emails can be configured to be sent from your personal email address rather than from ‘Brightspace’ (they are totally separate to notifications, so students don’t need to be signed up to receive them) so students experience how their instructor is engaged with their learning and is helping them to succeed.
What are Intelligent Agents?
The Intelligent Agent tool assists instructors by providing an automated notification when a pre-defined activity occurs (or doesn’t occur) on a unit. You could use them to welcome students on to your unit, monitor when students last logged into a unit, or to motivate 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?
Example of an intelligent agent email
Setting up an Intelligent Agent on your unit means customised emails can be sent out automatically to students. Replace strings can be used in your emails so that they are addressed to named individuals about named units, making the student experience more personal. You can also use them as a reporting tool; running them manually as and when required 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?
You can find step-by-step guidance on the Brightspace Staff Resources pages under Using Intelligent Agents. Here you will also find guidance on how to set up the following example agents:
Track student login activity
Send an automated welcome message
Monitor engagement with key learning materials
Provide automated feedback/feedforward on grade scores
If you require any further help, contact your Faculty Learning Technologist.
