In line with the UU’s AI policy, the AI functionality within Blackboard is available to instructors. Blackboard AI tools are available to staff designated with an instructor role. There are two aspects of Blackboard AI tools: the staff-facing design assistant that helps you build your course and the student-facing AI conversation tool that is used as a teaching tool.
The suite of Blackboard AI design tools an can be recognise recognised by the AI icon 
and are built using Microsoft Azure OpenAI. In line with the UU’s AI policy: all client course data and instructor input used for the input and all output generated by AI Conversation and AI Design Assistant is stored in the client’s existing Blackboard database by Anthology.
👉 Remember Blackboard AI tools are experimental, and are best used for ideas or as a starting point for your tasks; any auto-generated content should be reviewed for bias and accuracy.
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Your assignment and rubric have been generated, adjust other assignment settings such as due date and make it visible to students. Students can assess it in the normal way:
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Autogenerate Journal and Discussion topics
This tool will generate a journal prompt based on a description or existing course content.
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This brings up the Create Items menu, scroll down to Participation and Engagement and select Journal (or Discussion)
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This brings up the Journal editor, select Auto-Generate journal (or Discussion)
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Define the journal (or Discussion): add a description or Select course items to inform the AI
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This will give you a number of journal (or discussion ) prompts and titles with relevant cognitive level (if not specified before hand). Select the most appropriate prompt and click Add.
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This adds the prompt and the title to the Journal editor, click Save when you are happy with the text.
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Make the journal or discussion visible and students can access it in the normal way:
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This adds the image to the document.
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AI Conversation tool
The AI Conversation tool is student-facing chatbot. It allows students to participate in discussions with an AI persona. You select the type of conversation for the students to engage in: socratic questioning and role-play then define a topic/ scenario and persona. In Socratic Questioning, the AI persona encourages students to think critically through continuous questioning, whereas the Role-play option allows students to play out a scenario with the AI persona.
To set up an AI Conversation …
In Course Content choose the plus icon and select Create from the drop-down menu.
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This brings up the Create Items menu, scroll down to Participation and Engagement and select AI Conversation
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This brings up the AI conversation editor (note the interface is similar to an assessment). You need to complete three steps to set up your Socratic questioning or Role-play conversations.
Step 1: Select the conversation type:
Socratic questioning or Role-play
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Step 2: student instructions for Socratic questioning
Enter the key question you wish to discuss, make it clear and open-ended. Then click Next
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Step 2 Student instructions for Role play.
Enter a scenario for your role-play; state clearly the role of the student, the role of the AI persona and the aim of the role-play, then click Next.
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Step 3: Define your AI persona
You can be specific and use a historical figure or enter more general traits for the persona. You have the option to edit the image, change the name, describe the persona’s personality occupation even mood.
Choose the complexity of responses (scale runs undergraduate to PhD), then click Save
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NB If you are choosing role-play, make sure your character reflects the persona an scenario described in step 2 :
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Then Preview chat to check the conversation is working as expected:
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Enter dummy student responses to test the conversation, then reset the chat
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Give the Conversation an appropriate name then use the cog to adjust the settings, it is a formative assessment by default, so you can assign points, due dates etc.
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When you are happy with the settings and functionality, make the conversation visible to students. It will be listed in course content with the AI conversation icon.
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Students can then start interacting with the AI persona:
Socratic Questioning student view
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Role-play student view
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