What are Intelligent Agents in Talon?

What You Can Do with Intelligent Agents

1. Email students who haven't logged in or accessed the course in a set number of days
   
2. Identify students scoring below a certain grade threshold
   
3. Send automatic reminders when assignments haven't been submitted
   
4. Recognize student achievements such as completing a module
   

Why Use Intelligent Agents?

What does the research say? (Case Study at Deakin University)

Deakin University used Intelligent Agents in courses with 2,100+ students.

1. 95% of students felt instructors cared about their progress after receiving agent messages.
   
2. 90% course retention rate.
   

The research found that automation increased students' sense of connection rather than decreasing it.

How Intelligent Agents Work

1. Basic Info

Enter a clear, descriptive name (for example, "Quiz 2 Low Score - Coaching"). Add an optional description and category. The Agent is enabled box must be checked, or the agent will not run.

2. Scheduling

Set how often the agent checks its rules. Daily is the most common setting. A start date and end date can also be set - useful for limiting an inactivity nudge to the first few weeks of the term. 

3. Criteria

The rule the agent checks. This includes who it looks at (all students, or a specific role) and what it looks for (login activity, course activity, or a release condition). Any release condition already used elsewhere in TALON - on content, assignments, quizzes, or grades - can be used as agent criteria. 

4. Action

What happens when the rule is met. This is almost always an email. Instructors choose whether the email sends the first time a student meets the criteria, or every time the agent runs and the criteria are still met.

 

Creating Your First Agent: Step by Step

Agents evaluate at runtime, not continuously.

Agents check their criteria only at the scheduled run time, not continuously throughout the day. This matters most for negative conditions, like "has not logged in." A student is flagged only if they still meet that condition at the exact moment the agent runs. For example, if a student hasn't logged in for five days but logs in an hour before the agent runs, they will not be flagged that run - even though they went five days without logging in up to that point. If they are still inactive at run time, they will be included.

1. Role in Classlist - choose All Users to capture the full student roster, or Users with Specific Roles
2. Login Activity - trigger based on whether a student has or has not logged into TALON within a set number of days
3. Course Activity - trigger based on whether a student has or has not accessed the course within a set number of days
   
4. Release Conditions - trigger based on specific course activity; choose a Condition Type (Assignments, Checklists, Content, Discussions, Grades, Quizzes, etc.) and configure the Condition Details for that item
   

When attaching multiple release conditions, you can choose whether students must meet all conditions (AND logic) or just one of them (OR logic). This toggle is available in the release conditions area - see All vs. Any Conditions under Setup Tips below.

1. Repetition - choose whether the agent acts the first time criteria are met, or every time the agent runs and criteria are still met
2. Send an Email - compose the email the agent will send; use replacement strings like {InitiatingUserFirstName} to personalize messages automatically
3. Attachments - attach files to the agent email if needed
4. Email Format - choose HTML or plain text
   

Use Practice Run before enabling an agent. Practice Run executes the evaluation logic without sending anything. It shows which students would receive the email, so criteria can be verified before the agent goes live. Practice Run is available in the action arrow dropdown next to any saved agent on the Agent List page. 

Running an Agent Manually

Viewing Agent History

Four Common Use Cases

Setup Tips

1. Sender name: Agent emails cannot come from a personal address, but the display name is customizable. Set this under Intelligent Agents > Settings rather than leaving the system default.
2. Reply-to address: Set a reply-to address so student replies route back to the instructor.
3. BCC yourself: In smaller classes, BCC the instructor so there is a record of who received the message. Students will not see the BCC.
   
4. No email needed: An agent can run without sending anything - useful for reviewing which students meet a condition before deciding whether to reach out manually. 
5. All vs. Any conditions: When using multiple criteria, decide whether students must meet all conditions (All/AND) or just one (Any/OR). This toggle is located in the release conditions area.
   
1. All conditions produces a smaller, more targeted group.
   
2. Any conditions produces a broader one.
   
3. Choose All to catch students showing several risk factors together, and Any to catch students showing any single warning sign.
   

Common Mistakes

1. Forgetting to enable the agent. A saved agent that isn't checked as enabled will not run.
2. Typing replacement strings by hand. A typo breaks the string with no error message. Copy and paste from the tooltip instead.
3. Skipping the Practice Run. Practice Run shows who would receive the email without sending anything, and should be used before every agent goes live.
4. Wrong repetition setting. "Every time" and "first time only" produce different results. Match the setting to the intended goal before saving.
5. No end date on the inactivity nudge. Without an end date, the agent will continue emailing students through finals week. 
   

Tips for Writing Automated Messages

1. Warm tone. Write as if speaking to a student in office hours - direct, and focused on what they can do next.
2. Answer two questions. Every message should address: Why am I getting this? and What should I do next?
   
3. Be transparent. A line such as "This message was sent automatically based on your recent activity" helps students understand the context rather than feel unexpectedly monitored.
   
4. Keep it short. Three to five sentences with one or two clear next steps tend to get more engagement than longer messages.
   
5. Use replacement strings. {InitiatingUserFirstName} and similar strings personalize a message with minimal extra effort.
   

Personalizing Emails with Replacement Strings

Tip: Copy replacement strings rather than typing them. Open the replacement strings tooltip link inside the agent email editor and copy/paste from there. A typo will cause the string to display incorrectly in the student's inbox, with no error message to flag it.  

Resources & Further Reading

1. D2L: About Intelligent Agents 
   
2. D2L: Set Up Intelligent Agents
   
3. D2L: Intelligent Agents Quick Reference Guide
   
4. D2L: Intelligent Agents Templates
   
5. Deakin University Case Study
   
6. TALON User's Resource Guide - Intelligent Agents
   

Questions? Need Help Building Your First Agent? Contact the AISD team - aisd@kirkwood.edu