Welcome to the AI Ready Blog, where we explore the evolving world of Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI in education, fostering dialogue, experimentation, and research to enhance teaching, learning, and collaboration across disciplines.
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Recent advancements in AI are introducing intriguing possibilities for course development workflows. The Blackboard AI Design Assistant represents a new approach to reducing some of the more repetitive aspects of curriculum creation.
At its core, the Assistant offers educators automated assistance in generating foundational course elements like learning modules, discussion prompts, rubrics, and assessment questions. The system supports complexity levels spanning from primary education through advanced doctoral curricula, providing flexible content generation across academic contexts.
What’s particularly interesting is the multilayered customization options. Educators can input course descriptions, select specific cognitive levels based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, and even provide existing course materials as contextual references. This allows for more targeted content generation compared to generic AI tools.
The Blackboard AI Design Assistant includes several noteworthy features:
- Module structure suggestions that help organize course content
- Discussion and journal prompt generation
- Rubric creation with adjustable assessment frameworks
- Test question generation across multiple question types
- Contextual image selection and generation
This tool supports over 35 languages, potentially expanding accessibility for international educational environments. The developers have also incorporated ethical AI principles, emphasizing human oversight, fairness, and responsible technology use.
As with any emerging technology, careful evaluation and thoughtful implementation will be key to determining its true educational value. While not a complete replacement for human instructional design, it represents an evolving technology worth examining for potential workflow efficiencies.
For more information please see the Blackboard Ultra Instructor Guide: AI Design Assistant and our previous post on the AI Conversation Tool.
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