The Open University of Hong Kong: Interactivity as a Key Issue

Part2: Software description

Software Agents
Software Agent is an electronic assignment handling system directed through a web server environment. The key players for the software agent are students, tutors and academic staff as the course coordinator.
This figure describes the function of the software and the duties of its key players.




The interaction between the key players using software agent:

Most of the time, students, tutors and teaching staff as coordinator in OUHK are located in remote places, so they use software agent as an online environment to support the interaction between them. Each of the software's key players has its own duties. For example, Students in a course are required to submit assignment and homework to the tutor. Then the tutors mark the assignments and provide feedback to students. The responsibility of the course coordinator are making assignments, scheduling examinations, delivering course materials, supplementing teaching notes, monitoring students ' learning process and track tutors' teaching performance. Software agent provides an online environment that gathers the three key players and helps them to perform their duties as following (as mentioned in the software manual):

• Send alert e-mails to inactive students (those who have not accessed the course Web site for a long period of time). The course coordinator decides the length of the inactive period and instructs the software agent to send the alert e-mails based on the established time.


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  Send e-mails to inform tutors about inactive students and advise tutors to have proactive consultation with those students.


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  Send e-mail alerts to those students who have not downloaded a particular piece of course material or who have not read an important piece of course news since it was uploaded to the file server. This helps prevent students from missing information or forgetting to download an important item, such as an assignment file.


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  Help the course coordinator keep track of students’ progress, and send e-mails to the coordinator and tutors about those students whose performance is at a marginal level.


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  Retrieve information from the course timetable and send reminder e-mails to students. For example, it might send a reminder to students five days before an assignment due date and one day before a face-to-face session.


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  During the period when assignments are submitted, the agent will monitor the assignment submission status and send e-mails after the due date to those students who have not submitted the assignment. It will also inform the course coordinator and tutors about those students.


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  Enter or update course presentation information.


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  Post course news and announcements.


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  Upload assignment files and supplementary study material.


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  Remind them about upcoming face-to-face sessions


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  Remind students to submit their assignments before the due date


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  Inform students that a new course item (such as a course announcement or an assignment file) has been posted on the course Web site for them to read or download

References:

-S.Choy, S.Chung, Y.Tsang,”Software Agents to Assist in Distance Learning Environments”, Educause Quarterly, 2005, PP.34-40.

-Student's Use of Tutorial Support at OUHK.(n.d).Retrived September17, 2008 from http://www.ouhk.edu.hk/WCM/?FUELAP_TEMPLATENAME=tcSingPage&ITEMID=CCCRIDALCONTENT_493793

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