It is Fall of 2007 when John Smith begins his college life at the University of Somewhere in Cool City. The day after his arrival on campus, John attends the freshman student orientation where he receives information on how to use the computing environment at the university. A one-page instruction sheet tells John, “Listed below is your username and password. Please log into the campus portal at http://www.UnivofSomewhere.edu to access resources you will find necessary and useful as you progress in your college career.”

While enjoying a brief snack later in the campus cafeteria, John flips open his laptop computer and clicks on the Virtual Private Network (VPN) icon located on the screen and opens a Web browser window. In a matter of seconds, John’s laptop is linked to the campus wireless network, authenticated to the campus computing network, and his personal portal page is shown at his university Web site in the browser window. There he enters his username and password, and he retrieves a personal page that includes direct access to resources within the university’s course management system, student information system, university library, e-mail system, campus instant messenger, and other helpful links. After spending few minutes on the campus portal site, John then customizes his personal portal site to display all of his courses within a box positioned in the top right corner of his portal page, his Hotmail e-mail messages on the left, his campus news on the right, and his instant messenger buddy list right in the middle of his personal portal page. More available campus resources appear as links located in the lower portion of this same page.

John loves this dynamic computing environment since he must enter his password only once to access the university’s computing resources from anywhere on campus. While finishing his snack, John clicks on the welcome icon at the top of the course management section within his personal portal page. Even though he wants to explore his listed psychology course to see how many of his former high school classmates are in the class, the course management system immediately recognizes that this is John’s first visit to the CMS and does not allow him to access any course link until he reads some quick notes and learns about navigational procedures and college polices.

Coming in as a freshman student with no previous understanding of online learning or use of the course management system, John scans through some instructional screenshots. He reads about the campus policies on plagiarism, then turns to the various available tools such as the grade book, drop box, discussion board, etc. He also is asked to answer discerning questions regarding his personal learning profile and his preferences on future interaction with the course management system. By answering these questions, John is configuring the system’s intelligent agents that will construct personalized responses to address his unique learning needs throughout his college life. The more John uses the course management system, the smarter these intelligent agents become so that the system can intuitively offer John more useful guidance.

After going through the onetime CMS orientation and configuration session, John decides he would like to virtually meet his classmates. He clicks on the various course links, and he is now allowed access to each course where he can view a list of his classmates. Some fellow students have posted their pictures in their profiles, while others offer video clips where they introduce themselves and talk about their academic goals, and yet others offer links to their personal portfolio pages. John looks forward to meeting his new classmates next week in person in the classroom.

It is the fourth week into the fall semester when John begins to think about his term paper assignment. His paper is to discuss the psychological effect of war on soldiers serving in combat. Not knowing anyone who has served in the 2003 war in Iraq, John determines he can use a CMS intelligent agent to perform a global profile search to find students at his university as well as at other universities whose profiles indicate they are 2003 Iraq veterans. He creates a brief questionnaire using the survey tool in the course management system and sends it out with an invitational message to some two hundred students attending various universities. The recipients of John’s survey receive it through their campus portals or simply through an e-mail message. After a couple of weeks, John receives multiple responses and uses the survey tool to analyze the data so he can begin drafting his paper.

Right before the Thanksgiving break, John receives a warning note from his digital mentor intelligent agent within the course management system regarding his freshman math course. The agent informs John of his continuing difficulties in the mastery of two of the required learning outcomes of the course. The agent offers John some additional reading materials, more math practices, and a list of five classmates who might be able to offer him tutoring. John decides to talk to one of those classmates after his Friday class and trade some tutoring services. In this situation, the CMS intelligent agent detected John’s deficiency by simply reviewing John’s test results and his grades on homework assignments. The agent autonomously warned John of an imminent problem while he still had time to address it, and additionally placed a note in John’s grade book for the instructor to review.

Upon his return from Thanksgiving break, John receives an unexpected note from his intelligent agent advising him that the system has noticed very similar right and wrong answers from John and two other classmates in the last three online psychology quizzes. Apparently John and these two classmates were sharing some of the exam questions or perhaps were studying together. This note simply reminded John that the intelligent agent is perceptive enough to become aware of any likely act of dishonesty within the school system. Being the first incidence of such a circumstance, the agent tells John that it will not notify the course instructor.

As the end of the semester approaches, John needs to register for the spring semester. He receives a message from his academic advisor suggesting that he take an additional non-credit math workshop. Apparently John is not yet ready to register for a 200 level math course. The academic advisor learned of John’s deficiency through another intelligent agent that graphically presented John’s learning outcomes to the advisor before she decided to ask John to take the non-credit math course.

After the Christmas holiday and several days before the spring semester classes begin, John uses another intelligent agent to sell his old textbooks to other students on campus. Because the agent knows what students have registered to take the same courses he has just completed, it offers John a list of students who may wish to purchase his used textbooks. After some eBay-like negotiations, John sells all his textbooks, and after the buyers deposit the purchasing funds into his personal PayPal account, he simply meets them on campus to deliver the books. John uses the same technique to buy the books he needs for the spring semester.