Unit 8-Choy, S., Ng, S., & Tsang, Y. 2005. Software Agents to Assist in Distance Learning Environments

This article address the issue of having a software agent instead of a human teaching assistant for the Open University of Hong Kong, a distance education university. Instructors at this university have to interact much with the Web server, so what usually happens is that the university hires teaching assistants, but this article is suggestion the use of software agents. The authors of this article are mainly looking at how software agents can create more effective communication between the instructors of the courses and their students. Therefore, the software agents did routine jobs for the course coordinator like send out reminder emails to students or duplicated emails to instructor for recording purposes. The authors of this article used the software in their courses and got positive feedback from their students. They are now trying to implement it throughout the university.

I think having any type of software that saves times and creates better communication between students and teachers is worth looking into. Having software that writes feedback emails seems like such a time saver. The more time you can save an instructor, the higher quality the course should be. I think that this software is a great idea, but I am slightly skeptical because the authors of the article are the people who designed the software and are the only ones who used it, so they might be bias of their software.