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

62% of Fall 2023 Blackboard Courses Now Using Ultra

9 of 10 UMBC students are enrolled in an Ultra course

As UMBC finalizes its migration to Ultra, more faculty opted to use the new course experience during FA2023. Specifically, of 1588 total available Blackboard shells, faculty have enabled 991 using...

Posted: September 20, 2023, 2:55 PM

Call for Proposals: Blackboard's Digital Teaching Symposium

Submissions due September 18, 2023

Do you have a digital teaching best practice or experience to share with other educators? What strategies help educators excel and thrive in a shifting higher education landscape? Share your...

Posted: September 7, 2023, 4:02 PM

Improved course management tools for Ultra in September

Preview new AI course design assistant tools also coming

As the fall semester starts, the next update for Ultra courses brings improvements to the course management tools and a new stock image resource for course banners. Additionally, faculty will also...

Posted: August 31, 2023, 1:37 PM

Support student success with Ultra’s progress tracking tools

Discover how and when students engage with course content

The success of students in a Blackboard course is often dependent on their level of engagement and their ability to stay on track with course content and assignments. As an instructor, it's...

Posted: August 30, 2023, 9:11 AM

Ultra Courses to Offer New AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Generate images, structure, test questions, and rubrics

As the landscape of education continues to evolve, the integration of cutting-edge technology into the classroom has become more vital than ever. The advent of generative AI tools is poised to...

Posted: August 10, 2023, 9:35 AM