Creating a course from scratch is time-consuming, and not everyone has dedicated instructional design support. The AI Design Assistant in Blackboard Ultra is built to help you plan, structure, and populate your Blackboard sites more efficiently - handling the repetitive groundwork so you can focus on the teaching.
Everything the AI Design Assistant generates is a starting point, not a final product. You can adjust, edit, and customise all outputs, and you remain in full control of what appears on your Blackboard site.
Content complexity can be tailored to your cohort, from undergraduate levels through to advanced postgraduate levels.
The AI Design Assistant is powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI, and Blackboard's approach to AI is underpinned by principles of human oversight, fairness, privacy, security, and safety.
What can the AI Design Assistant do?
The following features are available to help you build and manage your course content. Each heading links directly to the relevant Blackboard help page.
Course structure suggestions
Generate a suggested outline of learning modules for your course based on a topic or module title. A useful starting point for structuring content, particularly when setting up a new taught module or reviewing an existing one.
We have our Westminster module templates with the core items to be included; however, the AI Design Assistant can help with further improvements.
Discussion generation
Automatically generate discussion prompts relevant to a specific topic. Saves time when creating activities designed to encourage student engagement and critical reflection.
Journal generation
Create journal activity prompts for individual student reflection. Particularly useful for practice-based or professionally oriented modules where ongoing reflective writing is part of the assessment or learning design.
Rubric generation
Generate a marking rubric based on your assignment or assessment criteria. Provides a draft structure of performance levels and descriptors that you can refine before attaching it to any item to be marked.
Assignment prompt generation
Produce a draft assignment brief from a topic or learning outcome. Useful for generating initial wording that you can then shape to meet your specific assessment requirements and academic regulations.
Test question generation
Generate quiz or test questions on a given topic, including multiple choice and other question types. A time-saver when building formative assessments or knowledge checks within a module.
Question Bank generation
Build a bank of AI-generated questions on a topic that can be reused and drawn upon across multiple tests. Particularly helpful for creating varied question pools to support randomised assessments.
Insert or generate images
Add visual interest to course documents by generating images or searching Unsplash's stock photography library with AI-suggested keywords. Helps create more visually engaging course pages without needing external design tools.
AI Conversations
Create structured AI-powered conversation activities that students can engage with directly inside Blackboard. You set the topic, context, and parameters - the AI then acts as a conversational partner for students to practice, explore, or reflect on course material.
Auto-generate layout in documents
When creating a Document in Blackboard Ultra, use AI to automatically suggest a layout and content structure based on a topic. A quick way to get a well-formatted page up and running rather than building from a blank canvas.