Communication with students is essential to establishing an engaging and collaborative classroom environment. The following guidance focuses on two iCollege tools for instructor-to-student communication: intelligent agents and announcements.

Intelligent Agents

Intelligent agents send automated messages to students and instructors based on course activity. For help creating intelligent agents, refer to D2L’s documentation and tutorial video.

Intelligent agents use the iCollege email system to notify students. Students will not receive the agent’s email in their PantherMail accounts unless they have set up email forwarding in iCollege. If a course design incorporates intelligent agents, include a section in the syllabus or Welcome module that explains when and why students will receive messages in their iCollege email. Additionally, make sure to update the course’s intelligent agent settings with the instructor’s preferred email address. While students won’t be able to reply to the instructor within the iCollege email tool, they can reply if they have forwarded emails to an external account.

In the Online BBA program, intelligent agents are most commonly used for nudging students that haven’t accessed the course recently, reminders to complete activities, or feedback on assessments.

Course Access Reminder

Intelligent agents can email students that have not accessed the course for a certain number of days through the Course Activity option. Consider how often students actually need to visit the course before setting up this agent. For example, in courses with weekly due dates, students may only access the course once or twice a week.

Intelligent agents can also email students that haven’t logged into iCollege at all via the Login Activity setting. Keep in mind that students will not see intelligent agent emails unless they are actively checking their iCollege email or have set up email forwarding.

Activity Reminder

Some instructors set up intelligent agents to message students when they haven’t turned in an assignment, submitted a quiz, or participated in a discussion post. Although these reminders can be helpful, consider how they work in the context of the instructor’s communication strategy. If the instructor already sends frequent announcements about upcoming due dates, additional intelligent agents may be overcommunicating with students.

If the agent is intended to contact students with missing work, make sure that the release condition is set to notify students if they have not completed something (“No submission to folder,” “Not visited content topic,” “No completed quiz attempt,” etc.).

Assessment Feedback

Another common use case for intelligent agents is to email automated feedback to students after they complete an assessment. For example, one agent can send tutoring resources to students that received a low or failing score, while a different agent can praise students with higher scores. Again, consider if the instructor already communicates this information through announcements or grading feedback.

Additional Recommendations

In addition to the above guidance, consider these best practices when working with intelligent agents:

• Remember to test release conditions with Demo Student prior to deploying in a live course.
• Include the instructor’s preferred contact method in every agent email intended for students.
• Remind instructors to enable intelligent agents at the beginning of each semester.

Announcements

Although it is rare for a building section to include a semester’s worth of announcements, most Online BBA building sections include a welcome announcement. This welcome announcement is intended for the first week of the course.

Other common features in welcome announcements include (in order of most frequently included to least):

• Course introduction video;
• Schedule of synchronous meeting times;
• Reminder to check the syllabus, with a direct link to the syllabus;
• Instructor’s communication preferences and contact information;
• Course goals and topics;
• Course materials;
• Instructor’s biography;
• Reminder to set up iCollege notifications; and
• Details of major assignments and group projects for the course.