What is the Blackboard AI Design Assistant?
Blackboard Ultra has integrated AI technology, known as the AI Design Assistant, to assist instructors with course design and creation. While AI provides many benefits, ensuring the transparency of its actions and the ethical use of data remain an ongoing topic of discussion. Hence, we need to exercise caution when it comes to when it comes to AI use. At the same time, we needed to explore how the AI Design Assistant affects user experience with Blackboard Ultra. Thus, a multidisciplinary team in Innovative Learning investigated and tested the tool internally before enabling it for Humber faculty.
These are the features included in the AI Design Assistant. Please click on each link to learn more:
- Generate Modules and Course Structures
- Generate Journal, Discussion and Assignment topics
- Generate Rubrics
- Generate Test Questions
- Generate Question Banks
- Generate or Find Relevant Images
- Generate Document Structure
Please watch this video for an in-depth understanding of what the AI Design Assistant is and how it works.
Is the AI Design Assistant Safe to Use?
The AI Design Assistant operates under the Microsoft Responsible AI frameworkEven though course content and information are used to inform and improve the AI Design Assistant, course data remains safeguarded and stays within Humber’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.
What are Innovative Learning’s Recommendations with the AI Design Assistant?
- Before and after creating content using the AI Design Assistant, please note: Faculty must review all AI-generated content before use, because AI may generate inaccurate or culturally insensitive information!
- Innovative Learning also recommends using the Context Picker to ensure that the AI is using the course items that are most relevant to generate information from. Learn more about it by viewing the video that follows:
- Innovative Learning advises against using the AI-generated images. We saw a variety of issues including culturally inappropriate images, disproportional body parts in people, and incorrect/odd images.
- Please replace it with image files selected from Unsplash, provide image files, or refrain from using any images.
- Please also adhere to the information contained in Humber’s Digital Campus plan, as it discusses how to explore AI safely and what to avoid.
Contact the Innovative Learning Support Centre if you need support. We are here to help!