Students walking around an imaginary college landscape with buildings, books, and larger-than-life computers.
Celena Kusch GenAI

AI Spark Tips: AI Support for Feedback in Blackboard

Providing timely and meaningful feedback to students is one of the most crucial and most time-consuming instructional activities. The Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS) offers the AI Virtual Assistant (AVA) to leverage its password-protected, closed GenAI environment to streamline and speed up the grading and feedback process. Instructors may use AVA

  • to suggest feedback comments based on rubric scores or
  • to rewrite hand-written comments to improve the tone and effectiveness of constructive feedback to students.
AI Virtual Assistant in a computer supporting a university instructor in a course.
AI-Generated Image

Getting Started with AVA for Student Feedback

Your Blackboard course enables you to use AVA feedback generation on any assignment or test (discussions coming soon) on the Flexible Grading page. You may read the student’s work and manually assess the work using your built-in rubric, then ask AVA to Summarize the rubric in the feedback box.

Screenshot of AI Writing Tools in Student Grading Feedback.
AI Writing Tools: Summarize Rubric Feedback Option

Alternatively, you may draft your own feedback, then ask AVA to suggest a Rewrite.

Screenshot of Blackboard Artificial Intelligence Virtual Assistant Rewrite Feedback Tool
AI Writing Tools: Rewrite Feedback Option

In both cases, you decide whether you wish to Save, Discard, or Try Again for the draft feedback. After saving, you may edit the text to match your voice and provide additional expert perspectives on your student’s work.

Why Use AVA v. ChatGPT?

The benefit of AVA is enhanced privacy and security. Blackboard is committed to meeting FERPA standards, and students expect that their work will be submitted securely into the LMS. Our contract with Blackboard foregrounds responsibility for FERPA compliance and builds those protections into its custom-built AI tools.

ChatGPT is not FERPA Compliant. While ChatGPT.Edu offers more tools for institutions to implement FERPA Compliance protections, those tools must be maintained by the campus administrators, and instructors must be in their institutional ChatGPT.Edu accounts to take advantage of those protections.

Bonus Tip: Use the Blackboard AI Design Assistant to generate a rubric for your assignment to enhance the quality of your feedback.

As AVA evolves, Blackboard will use GenAI to analyze feedback across rubrics, assignments, and courses and to make personalized suggestions for improvement to students. Find out more about the complete AVA Roadmap.

Faculty member speaking at a small podium to the side of projection slide. Three rows of students face the projection screen.
Lillian Reeves Faculty Development, Social and Emotional Learning, Student Success, Uncategorized

Building Classroom Connections, One Name at a Time

Peter Felten recently gave a memorable workshop for USC Upstate’s Fall Faculty Day. In addition to being a kind, funny, and passionate student advocate, he left us with plenty to think about – and to act on – as we launch into the fall semester. Much of his research shows that small adjustments in faculty and staff interactions with students can make a huge impact. One such small adjustment may be learning our students’ names in the first few weeks of class. Learning and using students’ names builds trust and can help create a supportive and inviting classroom environment. It also forms the basis for how we can ensure every student experiences “genuine welcome and deep care. All students need to understand that they are valued as people.

Continue reading “Building Classroom Connections, One Name at a Time” →