AI Initiatives

The DoIT AI site is here to help the community with information on using artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI (GenAI), to support UMBC’s Administrative, Instructional, and Research efforts. This site is designed to support employees looking to advance their use of GenAI. We recommend that our UMBC community start by visiting GenAI Tools, this page will highlight what free resources are available to use and what options exist to safely use GenAI while safeguarding UMBC institutional data.

For staff providing support, we encourage people to look at Administrative AI, as a starting point. Our goal is to save people time and hopefully improve the quality of their work, thus increasing productivity. We highlight some tools that DoIT is providing for support and we are seeking partners to work with DoIT on expanding myUMBC Answers. The real key to your office leveraging myUMBC Answers is to be able to provide validated and accurate content, such as FAQs or a handbook produced annually.

For faculty, we encourage you to also explore instructional AI and research AI. A wonderful resource in the College of Engineering Center for AI.  You can follow news about the UMBC Center for AI on social media through its sites on LinkedIn, Bluesky, X, and Facebook.Members of the UMBC community can subscribe to the UMBC AI Group to receive email about AI-related news and events.  If you have news to share with the UMBC AI community or suggestions or comments on the site, please send them to umbc-ai@cs.umbc.edu.

 

AI News

Showing items tagged ultra-update. Show All

Faculty prioritize grading & assessments for Ultra’s future

About 76% of current & planned Ultra aligns with Original

When Ultra was first introduced at UMBC in SP2018, four adventurous faculty opted to use a newly redesigned Blackboard course interface in their courses. Ultra represented a new phase of...

Posted: May 11, 2021, 11:27 AM

Coming Soon: Pinning Videos & Student Gallery View in Collab

Choose who you want to focus on during synchronous sessions

UPDATE: Following the introduction of gallery view to faculty in April 2021, we are pleased to announce that students and participants will also have access to 25 videos per page with the May...

Posted: May 5, 2021, 11:07 AM

Finalize Ultra gradebooks with new drop grades function

Much needed feature finally arrives to Ultra courses in May

An easier way to drop multiple grades from a category in the final grade calculation has been a frequent request from Ultra faculty for the Ultra course gradebook. With the May release, just in...

Posted: April 21, 2021, 10:12 AM

Group content release, peer assessment coming to Ultra

Frequently requested features available in April

In early April, a frequently requested feature finally comes to Ultra courses. Conditional release of content to groups or individual students allows faculty to create remedial paths to certain...

Posted: March 29, 2021, 10:57 AM

Coming Soon: Collaborate to Support 25 Videos Per Page

Increased engagement for moderators available in mid-SP2021

UPDATE #1: Gallery view is now available! Learn more in this FAQ. UPDATE #2: Students and participants gain access to gallery view with the May update. Spring will bring warm weather to the UMBC...

Posted: March 24, 2021, 8:00 AM