From Educause, this story on how distance courses are being facilitated by software agents Acting as teaching assistants. This distance courses effort comes from the Open University of Hong Kong.

The Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) is a distance education university with about 22,500 students. In fulfilling its mission, the university has adopted various Web-based and electronic means to support distance learning. For instance, OUHK uses a Web-based course management system (CMS) to provide students with a flexible way to obtain course materials. Apart from traditional print-based course materials and textbooks, the university staff and instructors use the Web to replace surface mail to deliver assignment files, supplementary study materials, and other correspondence with students. Online discussion forums provide students with a convenient place to ask questions and receive answers from the teaching staff.

An electronic assignment-handling system administers student assignments. Assignments, which are marked up and commented on, are considered an important element in the distance learning process. The assignment-handling system enables students to submit assignments electronically, apply for an extension, inquire about the status of their submitted assignments, and receive timely feedback on assignments from the teaching staff.

Clearly the Web-based CMS provides many benefits in the service of distance education. However, it is also fair to say that the current ways that we use and interact with the CMS are not ideal. Employing a human teaching assistant to relieve academic staff from manual monitoring and management of course activities is one way to improve the process, but not effectively and efficiently. We investigated employing a software agent to act as a teaching assistant to the course coordinator instead-the idea behind this article.