AI Design Assistant

Blackboard’s AI Design Assistant uses artificial intelligence (AI) to simplify course creation, enabling instructors to design learning modules and assessments efficiently.

AI Design Assistant

Available with Ultra Course View, Blackboard’s AI Design Assistant helps educators co-create essential course elements like module titles, descriptions, images, test questions, prompts for assignments, discussions and journals, and rubrics. This practical tool harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to streamline the design process, making it easier and more efficient for educators to develop engaging and organized courses.

Key Features of the AI Design Assistant 

  • Course Structure Suggestions: Generate learning modules based on your course’s title and description.  
  • Context picker: Uses the course context you choose to generate content for each AI feature.
  • Discussion and Journal Generation: Create prompts to encourage class interaction. 
  • Rubric and Assignment Prompt Generation: Assist in creating rubrics and assignment prompts tailored to your course. 
  • Test Question and Question Bank Generation: Inspire a range of questions for assessments. 
  • Image Generation: Use AI to give your course a unique look with stock photos from Unsplash. 

Using the AI Design Assistant

Tutorial Course Experience
AI Design Assistant Ultra
Artificial Intelligence features in Ultra Ultra
Authentic Assessments with AI Design Assistant Ultra
AI Suggestions for Authentic Assessments Ultra
AI Question Generation in Ultra Ultra
AI Rubric Generation in Ultra Ultra
AI Module Generation in Ultra Ultra
Key Facts About AI Design Assistant Ultra

Benefits

  • Reduce time designing a course: The use of the AI Design Assistant can provide instructors the ability to streamline and reduce portions of the course design process. This is acheived through the generation of course structure, introductory prompts, rubrics, and images.
  • Brainstorm content ideas: The AI Design Assistant provides instructors with the ability to create boilerplate content, brainstorm ideas for their content associated with assessments.
  • Safeguard intellectual property: Leveraging generative AI within Blackboard supports  instructors by ensuring intellectual property and data stays within the organization.

Limitations

  • Dependency on course information: The AI Design Assistant draws insights from a course’s title, description and selected course contexts to generate content. Therefore, the quality and relevance of the generated content may depend on the information provided in these areas.
  • Content filtering: There are security filters and restrictions in place, designed to prevent users of the AI Design Assistant tool from generating harmful or offensive content. Some topics may be perceived as entered harmful or offensive, and may be flagged, or documented for up to 30 days in the OpenAI service. Instructors are advised to use these tools responsibly and report any inappropriate content they encounter.

Considerations

  • AI Design Assistant Availability: The AI Design Assistant is a powerful tool available exclusively available to courses taught in Blackboard Learn Ultra Course View. The AI Design Assistant is not accessible in the Original Course View.
    • If you choose to migrate to Ultra Course View to leverage AI Design Assistant, the transition is irreversible. Once a course has been upgraded, there is no option to revert back to the Original Course View.
  • Safeguard Personal Identifiable Information (PII) Data: Only limited course information is provided to Microsoft for the Azure OpenAI service. However if any personal information is included in course titles, descriptions, and similar course information will be accessible to Azure OpenAI Service.
  • Key Facts About AI Design Assistant: Outlined on their help website, the AI Design Assistant leverages Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to auto-generate outputs. This is achieved by using limited course information (e.g., course title, course description) and prompting the Azure OpenAI Service accordingly via the Azure OpenAI Service API. Instructors can include additional prompt context for more tailored output generation. Blackboard discusses other key aspects on their help website.
  • Assist the AI Design Assistant: Generative AI in its current state still needs human review and correction, therefore throughout the use of the tool, disclaimers do highlight this aspect. Instructors are therefore encouraged to use this tool as a brainstorming tool, before making adjustments.
  • Trustworthy AI Principles: Blackboard has issued their commitment to ethical AI, outlined on their site on Trustworthy AI at Anthology. Their pillars include:
    • Humans in Control: Ensuring AI serves as a tool for educators, not a replacement. 
    • Fairness: Promoting equitable AI outcomes for all users. 
    • Privacy and Security: Safeguarding user data and information.