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

WT/SP2020 Courses Created in Blackboard on December 2, 2019

Blackboard course shells for WT2020 and SP2020 were created on December 2, 2019. The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in WT/SP2020 courses to allow faculty adoption with an updated...

Posted: December 3, 2019, 8:06 AM

DoIT Adjusts Support of Bb Ultra Rollout

All faculty still decide when to migrate before FA21

Based on new analysis of how Blackboard (Bb) Ultra has been adopted across campus, DoIT has decided to modify its approach to faculty support across colleges.  Specifically, DoIT will focus on...

Posted: November 26, 2019, 7:57 AM

Why CNMS Student Bb Use is So High

Use of Assessments is Key -- and Informs Ultra Rollout

When DoIT announced the phased rollout of Blackboard (Bb) Ultra on April 4 of this year, we did so based on the number of courses typically using Bb in each college as of Spring 2019, starting...

Posted: November 25, 2019, 10:59 PM

Improved accessibility support for Ultra courses in November

Light update also features new icons throughout Ultra system

As a fully redesigned system, Ultra benefits from an intentional focus on accessibility and mobile responsiveness. In addition to extensive checks to meet accessibility standards, Ultra includes...

Posted: November 5, 2019, 9:52 AM

RESOLVED - Blackboard Offline on Oct 7

UMBC is monitoring the issue & working with Bb support

At approximately 5:30pm, DoIT staff became aware of a potential outage with our instance Blackboard Learn. System admins immediately investigated the reports and opened a ticket with Blackboard...

Posted: October 7, 2019, 6:09 PM