AI Initiatives

UMBC Shield and the black text UMBC Artificial Intelligence

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, a page that highlights free resources and provides guidance on using GenAI while safeguarding UMBC institutional data safely.

For staff seeking support, we encourage people to look at Administrative AI, as a starting point. Our goal is to save folks time, improve the quality of their work, and increase productivity. We showcase tools that DoIT provides to support these objectives.

We have launched myUMBC Answers, an AI-supported search bar. We are seeking partners to expand this tool. The key to leveraging myUMBC Answers is providing validated and accurate content, such as annual FAQs or handbooks.

Faculty, are encouraged to explore Instructional AI and Research AI. The UMBC Center for AI in the College of Engineering is an excellent resource for AI-related research and innovation.  Stay informed by following the center’s social media chnnels on LinkedIn, BlueskyX, 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

Submit your Bb class to the Ultra Course Redesign Challenge

Win a Kindle Fire!

The Ultra Course Redesign Challenge offers faculty an opportunity to share their redesigned courses using the new Ultra interface for a chance to win a Kindle Fire.  The challenge is open to any...

Posted: August 9, 2019, 1:58 PM

Publisher Integrations Updated in Blackboard for FA2019

Cengage & Wiley fully supported in Ultra courses

Several publisher integrations will be updated at the end of summer to leverage modern infrastructure functionality, which will change the way faculty access those tools. Both Cengage Mindtap...

Posted: August 6, 2019, 8:06 AM

Increased Test Randomization Available in Ultra in August

Organizations also come to Ultra next month

In the August update to Ultra courses, faculty can create question pools to help build assessments quickly and better support academic integrity. Instructors can add questions to from all existing...

Posted: July 30, 2019, 11:21 AM

FA2019 Courses Created in Blackboard on July 28, 2019

Blackboard course shells for FA2019 were created on July 28, 2019. The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in FA2019 courses to allow faculty adoption during the phased roll-out of...

Posted: July 30, 2019, 11:19 AM

Access to UMBC Google Drive Comes to Ultra in July

Learn what’s coming to Ultra & Collaborate next month

This month’s update to Blackboard will provide access to UMBC’s Google Drive. Faculty, staff, and students will be able to view their Google cloud storage from their Ultra courses, user profile,...

Posted: July 3, 2019, 12:30 PM