[Air-L] Feedback regarding Blackboard AI assistant

[Andrea Guzman]

Hi all,

Our university is holding focus groups regarding the integration of an AI assistant into Blackboard. I would be interested in hearing about other people’s experiences with or discussions about this particular assistant or other LMS assistants they may have encountered. As I’m sure you all are aware, there are numerous pedagogical and ethical implications to consider here, and I want to get a sense of how others are approaching them.

Below is a brief description of what our institution has forwarded to us: AI Design Assistant
The AI Design Assistant is an intuitive and efficient tool that gives you a head start on some of the more time-consuming aspects of building a course in Blackboard, while keeping you in control. It was developed in accordance with Anthology's Trustworthy AI Approach<https://www.anthology.com/trust-center/trustworthy-ai-approach>, and with privacy, security and inclusivity in mind and is built on Microsoft's Azure Open AI.

The AI Design Assistant uses context from within the course, like the course name, as well as content that you provide via a Description field and customizable settings, to generate its suggestions. As the instructor, you are responsible for reviewing and choosing to utilize any content generated by the AI Design Assistant.
As of October, 2023, the AI Design Assistant has 6 primary capabilities in the Blackboard Ultra Course View:

  1.  Recommend royalty-free images from the Unsplash library, based on AI-generated keywords
  2.  Generate new images to use as thumbnails in Learning Modules
  3.  Propose test questions based on the content of an Ultra Document
  4.  Write test questions to be added to a Test
  5.  Generate a rubric to use for assessing Assignment submissions
  6.  Suggest Learning Modules to build a course structure



_____
Andrea L. Guzman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dept. of Communication
Northern Illinois University
she/her/hers
alguzman at niu.edu<mailto:alguzman at niu.edu>
https://andrealguzman.net<https://andrealguzman.net/>
ICA Human-Machine Comm. Interest Group<https://humanmachinecommunication.com/>

Recent publications:
The SAGE Handbook of Human-Machine Communication<https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-sage-handbook-of-human–machine-communication/book273648>
Moving Human-Machine Communication Forward through the Study of Non-Use & Failure<https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/vol9/iss1/8/>
Should Machines Write about Death: Questions of Technology, Humanity, & Ethics in the Automation of Journalism<https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-32103-5_28>