AI Initiatives

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

For staff providing support, we encourage people to look at Administrative AI, as a starting point. Our goal is to save folks time and improve the quality of their work, thus increasing productivity. We highlight some tools that DoIT is providing for support.

Additionally, we have launched an AI-supported search bar called myUMBC Answers.  We are seeking partners to work with DoIT to expand myUMBC Answers. The key to your office leveraging myUMBC Answers is providing 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. An excellent resource in the College of Engineering is the UMBC 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-experience. Show All

Basic Journals Arrive to Ultra Courses in June

Tweaks include assessment feedback, course copy improvements

Next month's Blackboard update brings a frequently requested tool to Ultra courses: the Journal! Journals are a personal space for students to communicate privately with instructors or to reflect...

Posted: May 29, 2020, 10:07 AM

Updated Ally indicators for Ultra courses in February update

Tweaks provided for self-enrolled groups & discussion boards

This month's Ultra update focuses on increasing the visibility of Ally in Ultra courses. Faculty who upload files directly to the Course Content area or within folders and learning modules will...

Posted: February 7, 2020, 12:32 PM

Google Assignments and File Embed Available for Bb Courses

Use Google's Rich Editor to Provide Student Feedback

In January 2018, Box discontinued Crocodoc in favor of the Box inline grading tool. The goal of this transition was to provide a similar and simpler experience users know from the traditional Box...

Posted: January 8, 2020, 11:32 AM

Students like Ultra design, organized courses

User surveys reveal consistent satisfaction with Ultra style

More than 70% of 606 student survey respondents who took a course that used Ultra during the FA2019 semester said they were satisfied with the experience. When asked, students described Ultra as...

Posted: December 17, 2019, 2:20 PM

New group enhancements scheduled for December Ultra update

Ungraded assignments also coming this month

Managing large numbers of students and groups is an important tool in Blackboard. In the current version of Ultra, faculty had to create assignments and discussions before they could create and...

Posted: December 3, 2019, 11:26 AM