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 blackboard. Show All

New Respondus Lockdown Browser Features Auto-Update in July

Students using Win/Mac must install to gain this feature

The July update to the Windows and Mac versions of Respondus LockDown Browser will feature a new Auto Update function that starts when the application opens.  To optimize the test proctoring...

Posted: June 28, 2021, 4:13 PM

Groups & gradebook enhancements planned for Ultra in July

Improved functionality for groups support larger enrollments

The groups tool in Ultra has been redesigned for the July update to improve overall performance, particularly for large courses. This redesign includes functionality to make it easier to find...

Posted: June 25, 2021, 9:18 AM

June update supports written feedback via Ultra rubric rows

Also coming: Record short audio/video course announcements

6/5 update: The June release is delayed. As soon as we have more information, we will post it. 7/1 update: The June release was rolled into the July update. Rubrics can be an essential tool for...

Posted: May 13, 2021, 1:44 PM

Blackboard Courses Scheduled for Server Retirement in FA21

Courses Before Summer 2018 to be Retired

During the Summer 2021, DoIT staff and Blackboard will archive our entire instance of Blackboard, which will save individually backed-up copies of every course and organization through SP2021....

Posted: May 12, 2021, 4:24 PM

Test Scoring Moving to Akindi Bubble Sheets

Print or scan a test from any local computer

Beginning Fall 2021, UMBC will employ Akindi for paper-based, bubble sheet assessments. Akinidi is a Scantron alternative that allows instructors to print and score bubble sheets from any local...

Posted: May 12, 2021, 1:58 PM