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 blackboard. Show All

Copy Rubrics Between Ultra Courses Starting in September

New features also focus on assessment & grading enhancements

In early September, Ultra courses will receive updates in several key areas that benefit instructors and students. Maintaining the trend focusing on assessment and grading, these updates also...

Posted: August 31, 2022, 9:29 AM

Akindi Bubble Sheet Training

Learn how to implement the paper-based assessments

As we return to the physical classroom, many faculty are planning to employ paper-based assessments during their synchronous class sessions. Akindi is UMBC's tool whereby faculty download bubble...

Posted: August 25, 2022, 10:01 AM

Better Tests & Grading Lead New Bb Ultra Changes

Ultra to reach 95% feature parity with Original by SP2023

After extensive updates to assessments and grading, Ultra is expected to reach 95% feature parity by the end of spring 2023, allowing faculty to migrate their Original courses into the most...

Posted: August 23, 2022, 1:43 PM

Free Webinar Series: Teaching with Ultra, Basics to Advanced

Free training opportunities for faculty, TAs, and staff

The Bb Instructor Webinar Series offers free 45-minute webinars designed for instructors who are getting started with teaching using Blackboard Ultra and Collaborate. Topics include getting...

Posted: August 8, 2022, 11:32 AM

FA2022 Courses Created in Blackboard on July 28, 2022

Blackboard course shells for FA2022 were created on July 28, 2022. The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in FA2022 courses, which allows faculty to convert a new Original course to...

Posted: July 29, 2022, 8:13 AM