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6.51. Intelligent Agents

Intelligent Agents

Intelligent agents are messages that can be customized and automatically emailed to individual learners. Messages could be released when a student fulfills a particular task or misses an opportunity. For example, an instructor may choose to set an intelligent agent to let a student know when they have missed a deadline on an assignment or want to acknowledge a student who achieved an exceptional score on a quiz. Intelligent agents require a small initial setup, then they work all on their own, in the background of a course.

Consider the benefits of using agents.

Instructor Presence: Student engagement deeply depends on instructor presence. IA can broaden the reach of the instructor and spark further interaction and connection with students.
Immediate Feedback: Intelligent Agents are working anytime students are working, including nights, weekends, and holidays.
Outreach Tool: Students that are disengaged or falling behind can really benefit from a reminder. You can set a variety of release conditions to flag when a problem has reached a threshold without constantly researching the progress of your students.
Increase Student Success: All of these benefits encourage the best from our students. Staying on track, recognizing problem areas, and acknowledging achievement are all important to student success.

You can also hear from an expert, Dr. Cathy Rhodes, "Using Intelligent Agents for Success" (YouTube) for real-world advice using agents.

Getting Started

To access intelligent agents, select Course Admin from the NavBar. (It may be located under More.) Choose Intelligent Agents from the Course Admin page.

More and Course Admin highlighted from the navba. Arrow pointing to open Course Administration page. Intelligent Agents highlighted.

Select New from the Agent List page. Give the agent a descriptive name in Agent Name. The Description is optional, but this can be helpful information to keep track of multiple agents. For this example, the agent created will send an email to students who score below 85% on the Second Essay Exam. Instructors may include a link to review material here.

Check Agent is enabled under the Status option.

New button highlighted with arrow pointing to New Agent window. Agent details page with the agent name and description textboxes highlighted. Status checkbox highlighted.

In the Agent Criteria section, it is not recommended to use the Login Activity criteria as the emails are sent to D2L email addresses. Course Activity criteria are more useful because they will initiate an email to students who have logged into D2L but have not accessed the course for the specified number of days.

Release Conditions enable a set of very specific conditions for the intelligent agent. Choose Create and Attach to develop new conditions.

Login Activity has a No symbol to discourage use. Course Activity is highlighted with 3 days as an example. Release Conditions has the Create and Attach button highlighted.

Replace Strings

Replace strings help personalize the message being sent, such as addressing the email to the learner’s first name or indicating the date that a specific user last logged in the course. There are several replace strings that can be used in Intelligent Agents. You can view the complete list (D2L.com). It is important to note, that some can be used only in the body of the message while others can also be used in the subject.

In this example, the purpose of this agent is to send review materials to students who score below 85% on the Module 2 Quiz by selecting Grade Value on a Grade Item from the Condition Type menu. The steps are as follows:

Choose the Module 2 Quiz grade item from the Grade Item menu.
Choose the Less Than symbol (<) from the Criteria menu.
Enter 85 in the Grade textbox, then select Create.

Condition type drop down menu expanded to display the grade value on a grade item option. Grade item drop down menu expanded to select second essay exam. Criteria drop down menu expanded and the less than symbol selected. Grade textbox and Create button.

The Create a New Release Condition window will close and the new release condition will be displayed. The following steps are necessary to complete the agent.

Under Actions, choose whether the intelligent agent should take action only the first time the criterion is met by a user or every time the criterion is met by a user.
In the To: textbox, enter the replace string {InitiatingUser} so that the email address of the student who scores below 85% on the second essay exam will be placed in the field.
Enter an appropriate email Subject. Then, enter the Message content. Personalize the message by entering the replace string {InitiatingUserFirstName} or similar. (See more information on Replace Strings at the end of this tutorial.)
Choose the HTML option selected under the Email Format options.

Action repetition options. Email format options To textbox with a replace string entered to fill in the students name.

Video Instead of Text

Want to give your learners a break from reading yet another email? Why not record yourself delivering a message using Video Note (through Insert Stuff in the body of the email). This can help the learner feel even more connected.

Schedule Delivery

The Schedule option may be used to send reminder emails to students about projects or assignments. Check Use Schedule and the Update Schedule button. The Update Agent Schedule window will open. Choose the options for how often the reminder should repeat. Choose Update when finished. Select Save and Close to finish the agent setup.

The New Agent window will close and the newly created intelligent agent will be displayed in the agent list.

Update Schedule highlighted with arrow pointing toward Update Agent Schedule window. Settings and Update button highlighted. Save and Close highlighted.

Updates Summer 2022

Intelligent agents have had a minor update. Updates can now be scheduled as often as hourly. (Setting No Schedule means the agent will run by default every night.) Agents can be categorized just like assignments and quizzes. This is very useful if you use several agents. Categories will help to organize them. Agents also have long lists of feature options. Those can be minimized by clicking the section arrow. See the highlighted areas of the next image for more detail.

Category, Frequency and arrow highlighted.

Replace Strings (Brightspace Community)

Replace String List for Organization
Organization replace string	Description
{OrgId}	ID number of the organization
{OrgName}	Name of the organization

Replace String List for Org Unit
Org Unit replace string	Description
{OrgUnitName}	ID number of the organization unit
{OrgUnitId}	Name of the organization unit
{OrgUnitCode}	Code for the organization unit
{OrgUnitTypeID}	ID number of the type of the organization unit
{OrgUnitPath}	Path to files for the organization unit

Replace String List for User
User replace string (Unavailable in the Content tool)	Description
{UserId}	ID number of the user. This value is used internally by the system
{UserName}	Full name of the user or the username entered to log on
{OrgDefinedId}	Organization ID. This is an identifier specified by the campus for the user
{FirstName}	First name of the user
{LastName}	Last name of the user
{Email}	User's internal email address
{ExternalEmail}	User's external email address
{InternalEmail}	User's internal email address

Replace String List for Role
Role replace string (Unavailable in the Content tool)	Description
{RoleId}	Internal ID number for user's role
{RoleCode}	Code for user's role
{RoleName}	Name of user's role

Replace String List for Mail Template
Mail Template replace string	Description
{HelpDeskEmail}	Email address of the Help Desk
{HelpDeskName}	Name for the Help Desk
{LoginPath}	URL of the login path for this site
{PasswordResetLink}	Link for users to reset their passwords

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