How to use the AI Design Assistant:
The AI Design Assistant in Blackboard Ultra will soon be available to help faculty at Daemen University streamline course creation. This tool can assist in generating course structures, discussions, journals, rubrics, assignments, test questions, question banks, images, and AI-driven conversations. While this tool is powerful, always review AI-generated content for accuracy, bias, and relevance.
Key Features:
- Course Structure Suggestions: Generate learning modules based on course titles and descriptions.
- Discussions and Journals: Create prompts at various cognitive levels (Bloom’s Taxonomy).
- Rubric and Assignment Generation: Produce grading rubrics and assignment prompts tailored to your course.
- Test Questions and Banks: Develop test questions of various types (e.g., multiple choice, essay).
- Images and AI Conversations: Insert AI-generated images and facilitate Socratic questioning.
How to Use:
- Access AI Design Assistant: In your Blackboard Ultra course, find AI Design Assistant options in content creation menus.
- Customize Content: Input descriptions, select cognitive levels, adjust complexity, and choose output languages.
- Review and Edit: AI-generated content may contain biases or inaccuracies. Always review and modify content to ensure quality and alignment with course objectives.
- Add to Course: Once satisfied, add the generated content directly to your course.
Important Considerations:
- AI-generated content is not perfect. Review all AI-generated materials for bias, accuracy, and appropriateness.
- Use AI as a starting point, not a final product.
- Daemen University emphasizes ethical use of AI, ensuring privacy, security, and fairness.
- For detailed steps and video tutorials, visit Blackboard AI Design Assistant Help.
- Review Daemen’s Position Statement on the use of Generative AI.
Contact the ID team with questions or schedule a consultation to walk through using the AI Design Assistant in your course.
Using the AI Design Assistant:
| Tutorial: | Course Experience: |
| AI Design Assistant | Blackboard Ultra |
| Artificial Intelligence features in Ultra | Blackboard Ultra |
| Authentic Assessments with AI Design Assistant | Blackboard Ultra |
| AI Suggestions for Authentic Assessments | Blackboard Ultra |
| AI Question Generation in Ultra | Blackboard Ultra |
| AI Rubric Generation in Ultra | Blackboard Ultra |
| AI Module Generation in Ultra | Blackboard Ultra |
| Key Facts About AI Design Assistant | Blackboard 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.