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

August Release Brings Major Question Banks Update to Ultra

New mobile app, more assessment and grading improvements

It's another massive update for Ultra in August, bringing a significant improvement to question banks, a unified mobile app experience for faculty and students, and overall enhancements to...

Posted: July 26, 2022, 4:10 PM

Points Calculation & Display Arrive to Ultra Gradebook

Prevent question backtracking, copy question banks & more

The July update to Ultra courses brings ten new features and improvements, focusing on assessment, grading, and content creation. As with previous updates this year, the continued focus aligns...

Posted: June 29, 2022, 12:44 PM

Reminder: Blackboard Courses Scheduled for Server Retirement

Courses before Summer 2019 to be retired beginning 7/1

During Summer 2022, DoIT staff and Blackboard will archive our entire instance of Blackboard, which will save individually backed-up copies of every course and organization through SP2022. Courses...

Posted: June 7, 2022, 1:29 PM

Display files in Ultra Docs, Improve Weighted Grades in June

Feedback matters: Continued focus on assessment & grading

Summer brings four enhancements to Ultra course including three focused on assessment and grading. Enhancement to Overall Grade Weighting: Instructors can weigh individual items (e.g., tests,...

Posted: May 31, 2022, 11:21 AM

Akindi Importer Tool Available on 7/1

Write Questions in MS Word and Quickly Add to Blackboard

In the spirit of promoting academic integrity in testing, faculty in both Biology and Chemistry have been leveraging large question pools in their courses. Beginning July 1, the Akindi Importer...

Posted: May 11, 2022, 10:25 AM