Welcome to the Blackboard Mailbag, where we feature a commonly asked question that has been hitting our mailbox recently: blackboard@fordham.edu. You’ll find an archive of all of the previous questions and answers on our fordham.edu/blackboard website. Note: Features may change with future updates.
Blackboard has now enabled the AI Design Assistant that you can use in your courses. At all steps in the creation process, you’re able to adjust the complexity of content and customize everything that the AI Design Assistant generates.
Visit the Anthology (Blackboard’s parent company) AI Trust Center for more information about their approach to AI.
You can use the AI Design Assistant to:
- Guide you through building the Course Structure
- Generate Discussions or Journals from Course Title and Description
- Create Rubrics from Course Content
- Generate Assignment prompts and Test questions
- Question Bank generation from Ultra Documents
- Generate Images
See also the Blackboard Instructor Guide to AI Design Assistant
Course Structure
If you need help designing your course and don’t know where to start, the AI Design Assistant can guide you through building the course’s structure. The AI Design Assistant draws insights from your course’s title and description to generate learning modules. Learning modules can support a course objective, concept, or theme. Learning modules help you organize your content and guide how your students navigate through a topic.
In an empty course, select Auto-Generate Modules.
The Auto-Generate Modules panel appears. Each AI-generated module comes with a name and description.
You have several ways to customize the learning modules that the AI Design Assistant generates:
- Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the modules
- Select a prefixes for the module titles
- Choose whether to include AI-generated images for the modules
- Adjust the complexity of the modules’ focus
- Select the number of modules to generate
Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Review each learning module’s title and description for accuracy. Choose the modules you’d like to add to your course, then select Add to Course.
You can also edit learning modules to better fit your teaching style and goals. Visit Blackboard’s “Create Learning Modules” help topic to learn more about how to customize and navigate learning modules.
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
Discussion Generation
Discussions will be generated based on your course’s title and description. You have several ways to customize the discussions 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*
- Apply
- Analyze
- Evaluate
- Create
- Inspire me! (Provides you with a mix of levels)
- Adjust the complexity of the discussions’ focus by moving the slider
- Select whether or not you want to generate a title for discussions
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.
*Cognitive levels are based on Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Verbs (Infographic by Global Digital Citizen Foundation). See also Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy (Infographic by Eric Sheninger)
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
Journal Generation
Journals will be generated based on your course’s title and description. You have several ways to customize the journals that the AI Design Assistant generates:
- Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the journals
- Select the desired cognitive level*
- Apply
- Analyze
- Evaluate
- Create
- Inspire me! (Provides you with a mix of levels)
- Adjust the complexity of the journals’ focus by moving the slider
- Select whether or not you want to generate a title for journals
Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Review each journal for accuracy and bias. Choose the journal you’d like to add to your course, then select Add.
*Cognitive levels are based on Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Verbs. See also Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
Rubric Generation
Grading rubrics offer a structured framework to assess student work. Rubrics ensure both fairness and consistency in grading. Moreover, rubrics give students clear directives to meet desired learning outcomes. However, creating rubrics can take a lot of time. The AI Design Assistant creates rubrics by drawing insights from course context.
Rubric generation is an option everywhere that you can create a rubric. Select Generate to start.
You have several ways to customize the rubrics that the AI Design Assistant generates:
- Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the rubric
- Select the rubric type: percentage, percentage range, points, or point range
- Adjust the complexity of the rubric
- Define the number of columns and rows
Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. If the rubric meets your needs, select Continue to edit the rubric.
Review each cell of the rubric for accuracy. You can also further edit your rubric to better fit your teaching style and goals. Visit Blackboard’s “Rubrics” help topic to learn more about how you can customize your rubric.
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
Assignment Prompt Generation
You can generate assignment prompts that encourage students to:
- Engage in higher-order thinking
- Apply knowledge gained from your class
- Produce authentic submissions that are evidenced
- Emulate real-world situations
Assignment prompts are generated based on course context. On the assignment creation page, select Auto-generate assignment.
You’re brought to the Auto-Generate Assignment page.
The AI Design Assistant generates three assignment prompts. You have several ways to define the prompts that the AI Design Assistant generates:
- Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the prompts
-
Select the desired cognitive level*
- Apply
- Analyze
- Evaluate
- Create
- Inspire me! provides you with a mix of levels
- Adjust the complexity of the prompts’ focus by moving the slider
- Select whether or not you want to generate a title for the prompts
Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Review each prompt for accuracy and bias. Choose the prompt you’d like to add to your assignment, then select Add.
*Cognitive levels are based on Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Verbs. See also Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
Test Question Generation
Creating test questions takes a significant amount of time. The AI Design Assistant can offer suggestions for test questions, giving you extra time to focus on more complicated tasks. The AI Design Assistant is beneficial for both formative and summative assessments. Test questions are generated based on course context.
In the test creation panel, select Auto-generate question from the menu.
You have several ways to define the test questions that the AI Design Assistant generates:
- Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the questions
- Adjust the complexity of the questions
- Select the number of questions
You can select from the following question types:
- Essay
- Fill in the blank
- Matching
- Multiple choice
- True/False
- Inspire me! (Suggests a variety of question types to give you more options)
Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Choose the questions that you’d like to add to your assessment, then select Add to Assessment.
Review each question for accuracy. You can also edit questions to better fit your learning goals. Visit Blackboard’s “Edit Tests and Questions” help topic to learn more about editing test questions.
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
Question Bank Generation From Ultra Documents
Question Banks are sets of questions you can use across multiple assessments. The AI Design Assistant can build question banks based on an Ultra Document to gauge your students’ comprehension of the document’s topic while saving you time.
Select Generate question bank in your Ultra Document.
You have several ways to define the questions that the AI Design Assistant generates:
- Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the questions
- Adjust the complexity of the questions
- Select the number of questions
You can select from the following question types:
- Essay
- Fill in the blank
- Matching
- Multiple choice
- True/False
- Inspire me! (Suggests a variety of question types to give you more options)
Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Choose the questions that you’d like to add to your Question Bank, then select Add to Question Bank.
Review each question for accuracy. You can also edit questions to better fit your learning goals. Visit the “Edit Tests and Questions” topic to learn more about editing questions.
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
Generate images
You can directly insert AI-generated or stock images into the text editor by selecting the Image button.
When you use Unsplash, the search terms will be autopopulated from your text. You can select the X button and use your own search terms if you’d prefer.
With the AI Design Assistant, you can generate an image to insert into your text. Enter a description for your image and then select Generate.
Note: Students can only upload images and can’t generate images or use Unsplash.
Adjust image appearance
After you’ve chosen an image to insert, select Next. You can now customize how the image appears in the text.
Choose an aspect ratio for the image. You can keep the original aspect ratio, or convert it to a landscape or portrait display. The white grid lines show you what part of the original image will be displayed on screens.
You also have the option to adjust the slider to zoom in or out, and you can select and drag the grid lines to change the focus.
Select Next when you’re ready to insert the image.
You’re required to enter a display name. We recommend also adding alt text, to make the image accessible to users with screen readers.
By default, users can view and download the image. If you select Download only for the image, a placeholder will display on user screens until users download the image.
Return to the top to select another AI Design Assistant topic
For additional FAQs and resources about Blackboard, visit fordham.edu/blackboard, attend one of our workshops, or reach out to us with your availability and we will accommodate small groups and one-on-one sessions.
Have feedback or suggestions on features? Blackboard’s parent company Anthology hosts The Idea Exchange. This is a place specifically for Blackboard to track and manage enhancement requests. It allows for things like upvoting ideas and sharing development plans and statuses. You will need to create an account to access the Idea Exchange.