Instructional Support

Creating and running an intelligent agent

Learn how to use the Intelligent Agents tool to contact your students based on course activity criteria that you define. For example, you can set up an Intelligent Agent that will email all students who scored less than a 60% on a practice quiz and invite them to an online office hour before the next test.

  • Who is this for: Online Instructors
  • What is required: A D2L course and a desire to make things easier

Steps

View the D2L documentation: Creating and running an intelligent agent.

Examples of uses for Intelligent Agents include:

  • Emailing students to welcome them at the start of the term
  • Emailing students when their grades reach below a certain level.
    For example: Hello John. I see that your Business 101 grade is at a D average. Please contact me soon so we can discuss your situation.
  • Running a check for students who haven’t accessed the course within a set number of days. You can email the student and cc yourself as a notification measure.
    For example: Hello Jane. You register for Business 101 class, but I noticed that you haven’t access the course for 7 days.
  • Sending yourself an email when a student submit a Dropbox assignment in your course.
  • Emailing students after they view the content.
    For example: Hi Jill. I saw that you have viewed the Course Information module in Business 101 class. Don’t forget to take the syllabus quiz before moving on to the next module.

Things to consider when using Intelligent Agents:

  • Intelligent Agents do not send emails automatically after a condition is met (for example, a student gets a 60% score on a quiz). Instead, an Intelligent Agent will check for criteria at the scheduled time you choose OR when you run it manually.
  • Use Intelligent Agents sparingly–if students receive too many emails, they will just ignore your emails and the notifications will lose their effectiveness.
  • If you’re copying components from one course to another, each Intelligent Agent will be copied over, However, the settings of each agent will not be copied.
  • If you are exporting a course, Intelligent Agents are not included as part of the course export package.