Artificial Intelligence (AI) Design Assistant

• 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.

• 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.

• 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. 

The AI Design Assistant operates under the Microsoft Responsible AI framework.  Even though course content and information are used to inform and improve the AI Design Assistant, course data remains safeguarded and stays within BCM’s protected digital space, and isn’t shared externally outside your Blackboard course environment (Data Privacy Approach | Anthology). For more information about Anthology’s AI Approach, read their Trust Worthy AI Approach, which includes the following principles:

• humans in control
• fairness
• privacy
• security, and safety

If you need help designing or creating a journal, discussion or assignment and don’t know where to start, the AI Design Assistant can guide you through the creation process. The AI Design Assistant draws insights from your course’s title and description, as well as your desired cognitive level (which is aligned with Bloom’s Taxonomy) to generate journals, discussions or assignments.

Journals can support metacognition after a learning activity or help students with reflection. Learn more about AI Generated Journals on Blackboard’s website.

Discussions are beneficial for fostering community in your classroom, improving critical thinking and communication skills, and increasing student engagement. Learn more about AI Generated Discussions on Blackboard’s website.

Assignment prompts can encourage students to engage in higher-order thinking, apply knowledge gained from your class, produce submissions that are gradable within Blackboard, or to emulate real-world situations. Learn more about AI Generated Assignments on Blackboard’s website.

You can follow the instructions below:

1. Click on the purple ‘+’ icon above, between or below content items and press ‘Create’ to bring up the ‘Create Content’ menu. [view screenshot]
2. Select ‘Journal’, ‘Discussion’, or ‘Assignment’ from the menu. [view screenshot]
3. Make sure to press the ‘Auto-Generate’ button in the top right corner. [view screenshot]
4. Discussions, journals and assignments are automatically generated based on the title of the course, and the description included in the course. [view screenshot]
5. You have several ways to customize the discussions, journals or assignments that the AI Design Assistant generates.
   • Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the discussions
     • Select the desired cognitive level
       1. Apply
       2. Analyze
       3. Evaluate
       4. Create
       5. Inspire me! provides you with a mix of levels
          1. These levels are based on Bloom’s Taxonom
     • Adjust the complexity of the discussions’ focus
       1. There are ten levels of complexity for AI-generated content.
          1. Early primary school
          2. Late primary school
          3. Early middle school
          4. Late middle school
          5. Early high school
          6. Late high school
          7. Undergraduate lower division
          8. Undergraduate upper division
          9. Graduate level
          10. Advanced PhD level
   • Select whether or not you want to generate a title for discussions
   • Select Advanced options to change the output language
   • You can also select which course items you’d like the AI Design Assistant to provide context for discussions, journals or assignments if you’d like. Select Select course items to start. [view screenshot]
   • You can select a folder or learning module to include items from them in the generation process. When you’ve finished choosing items for context, select Select items to return to question generation.
6. Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Review each discussion for accuracy and bias. Choose the discussion you’d like to add to your course, then select Add.