This is one of the new AI Design Assistant tools in Blackboard that have been made available to staff from January 2024. Their use was recommended by the Educational Development Committee in November and approved by Education Committee in December 2023.
Purpose
Use of this tool is entirely optional. It suggests topics for assignments in a Blackboard course.
It is only visible to staff with any one of the following roles in the course:
- Instructor
- Module Administrator
- Course Builder
- Teaching Assistant
Video demonstration
Step-by-Step guide
Finding the tool
Create a new (or empty) Assignment and open it. At the top of the screen you will see a large black button: Auto-generate discussion.
Press the Auto-generate discussion button to begin the process:
After a short delay, potential assignment topics are displayed:
Getting good results
The tool always tries to generate content immediately after being launched (based on the course title), but for best results you will want to configure it using the settings panel on the left hand side and ask it to generate again. Each field in the settings panel is explained below:
Description
Enter some text to help define the area you want students to explore in this assignment. It should be in plain text and you can enter up to 2,000 characters. This is used to help refine the AI prompt.
Desired cognitive level
You can select the level of the assignment, using Bloom’s (Revised) Taxonomy as a reference. This affects the suggested tasks that comprise the assignment. If you choose options nearer the Create end of the scale, it may suggest that students create videos or podcasts as part of the assignment.
The options you can choose from are:
- Inspire me! – the default (a mix of levels)
- Apply
- Analyse
- Evaluate
- Create
Complexity
This slider field is used to help shape the reading level of the generated text. The further to the right of the scale, the more complex and technical will be the language. The extreme left is meant to be early primary school, the extreme right, PhD thesis level. Experiment with this to see how it applies to your discipline. Remember that there is no point setting an assignment whose language is so complex that your students can’t understand it!
Generate assignment title
If you tick this checkbox, then the tool will suggest a title for the assignment too. This will replace any existing title you may have set.
Generate
Use the Generate button to apply your changes
Selecting the content to use
When you are happy with the output, use the radio buttons to the left of each suggested assignment topic to indicate which one you want to use.
Use the black Add button to update your assignment.
You can use the standard editing tools to alter the title, make changes to the instructions, or even add an image. When you are happy with the content, you can make it visible to your students.
Acknowledging AI use
When the tools were approved at Education Committee a student rep suggested that staff should acknowledge their use in the course, just as we ask students to acknowledge the use of generative AI in their assignments. This was seen as good practice and the recommendation approved.
Our AI Design Assistant: Acknowledging Use page provides some suggestions.