AI Design Assistant

What is the Blackboard AI Design Assistant?

Blackboard Ultra has integrated AI technology, known as the AI Design Assistant, to assist instructors with setting up and creating a course. 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 AI’s usage of data. At the same time, we needed to explore how the new tool affects user experience with Blackboard Ultra. Thus, a multidisciplinary team in Innovative Learning investigated and tested the tool internally before enabling it for our faculty.

 

Is the AI Design Assistant Safe to Use?

The AI Design Assistant uses Microsoft Responsible AI framework. Anthology assured us that while our input data is used to train and improve AI Design Assistant, the data stays within Humber and isn’t shared with external organizations (Data Privacy Approach | Anthology). For more information about Anthology’s AI Approach, read their Trust Worthy AI Approach.

 

What can the AI Design Assistant do?

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.

The following five features are available:

 

AI-Generated Modules

  • There is an option to “Auto-Generate Modules”. Using this option, AI suggests a list of modules complete with titles, descriptions and, occasionally, images.
    • Please refer to the following resource for usage:
    • Some Suggestions and Observations
      • By entering logically formatted module titles and descriptions to the “Description”, and selecting the corresponding “Number of Learning Modules”, AI can generate relatively usable modules with fewer attempts.
      • While multiple attempts are required to get the desired number of modules, reducing “Number of Learning Modules” may result in fewer attempts to generate desired modules.
      • We advise 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.

AI-Assisted Image Search and Generation

  • You can use this feature in two main ways:
    • Course Banner: There is an option to select an image from Unsplash, where AI assists with pre-filled keywords.
    • Module Image: There are two new options: image selection from Unsplash, where AI assists with pre-filled keywords, and AI-generated image.
    • Please refer to the following resource for usage and guidance:
    • Some Suggestions and Observations
      • We advise against using the AI-generated images. We encountered 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.
      • We noticed that AI does not always suggest a keyword for the image search, and the pre-filled keyword may not match the user’s intent. Use your own keyword for the image search in those cases.

AI-Generated Questions

  • There is an option for AI to auto-generate test questions. Instructors can fine-tune by entering the description, complexity and the number of questions. Only five types of questions are currently supported, and they are: Essay, Fill in the Blank, Matching, Multiple Choice and True/False. There is also the “Inspire Me!” option which suggests a variety of question types.
    • Please refer to the following resource for usage:
    • Some Suggestions and Observations
      • Providing sufficient information in the “Description” section can result in effective question generation. Insufficient information may result in odd question generation behaviour such as pulling information from another course you are teaching, or from already deleted content for the course.
      • The “Inspire Me!” option may produce more Essay-type questions.
      • Answers to “Fill in the Blank” questions may be blank, and answers to some questions could be incorrect. It is also necessary to sanity-check all question content generated by AI.
      • Multiple attempts to generate questions may be required. It may also generate less than the requested Number of Questions.
      • AI may pull definitions from outside of your course content.

AI-Generated Question Banks

  • There is an option to generate question banks. Please refer to the following resource for usage:
  • Some Suggestions and Observations
    • It is recommended to post the document directly to Blackboard if you intend to use it for Question Bank generation. AI does not seem to digest the content of PDF, Word, videos, URLs, or images.
    • Providing examples of calculation and logic questions generates new calculation and logic questions. However, AI seems to be unable to generate any new scenarios or word problems.
    • You may require multiple attempts to get the desired number of questions that are usable with minor edits.

AI-Generated Rubrics

  • There is an option for AI to generate a rubric by drawing insights from course context. Please refer to the following resource for usage:
  • Some Suggestions and Observations
    • By providing a properly formatted description and giving the associated number of rows, the AI generates a reasonable rubric. However, it may require multiple attempts to get a usable rubric.
    • Sometimes it can generate an “undefined” description, and the percentage can be oddly distributed such as 100%, 8% and 10%. The layout could get broken as well. When situations like these arise, you must provide a better description, adjust properties, and regenerate, or manually change them yourself.

AI-Generated Discussions and Journals

  • There is an option for AI to generate discussion and journal topics. Please refer to the following resource for usage:
  • Some Suggestions and Observations
    • Make sure to select a desired cognitive level (Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create, or Inspire me! (which provides you with a mix of levels)) that meets your students’ level of understanding of the topic.
    • Remember, you can always adjust the complexity of the discussions’ focus by moving the slider!

Need support? Contact the Innovative Learning Support Centre. We are here to help!

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