GenAI – TIPS for Teaching

October 27, 2026October 27, 2026 Celena Kusch ACUE, Calendar, Faculty Development, GenAI, Online Learning, Technology

Blackboard Day 2027: Sustaining the Human Work of Teaching

Join us January 6, 2027 for our 8th Annual Blackboard Day

in The Learning Center in the Library Annex, Room 289,
by accessing Zoom in the CAIFS PD Course, or
by using the Zoom Link!

Register Now

9 am to 9:45 am

Welcome and Blackboard LMS Updates

Join the Blackboard Support Team to learn what is new in the Blackboard Learn Ultra Road Map for Spring-Fall 2027. Look for new AI Pulse Quiz Conversations, Gradebook upgrades, updated Content Editor, enhanced Groups and Rubric features, and more! Facilitator: Eric Gudmundson, Senior Manager, Blackboard LMS Solutions Engineering Team

10:00 am to 10:45 am

Blackboard and AI: Designing Ethical Foundations for Learning

Build Ethical Foundations. Student sits at a table with a contemplative expression. Screenshots of two AI Conversations with historical personas and a photo of a person writing reflections in a notebook. Blackboard Advanced.

How can we help students develop essential ethical foundations for AI use without taking time away from the content and competencies at the heart of our courses? This hands-on session introduces a four-week framework for creating AI-aware assignments that integrate AI literacy while keeping course learning outcomes front and center. Explore practical strategies for setting clear expectations for AI use and engaging thoughtfully with AI personas in Blackboard to build academic integrity. Facilitator: Dr. Celena Kusch, Executive Director, Academic Innovation & Faculty Support.

10:45 am to 11:30 am

Assessing What Matters in the Age of AI

Group of people in animated conversation around a table with a giant lightbulb symbolizing ideas floating above them

As artificial intelligence reshapes higher education, how can faculty ensure that assessments continue to measure meaningful student learning? This session explores how AI challenges traditional approaches to assessment and invites faculty to reconsider what students need to know, demonstrate, and accomplish. Participants will reflect on strategies for designing meaningful assessments that emphasize critical thinking, disciplinary knowledge, and authentic learning in an AI-enabled world. Facilitator: Dr. Jonathan Clemens, Professional Learning and Development, Risepoint. Dr. Clemens earned his Ph.D. in the history of science and technology from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and presents regularly on the impact of AI in higher education and instructional design.

11:30 am to 12:30 pm

Lunch and ACUE Effective Teaching Practices Pinning Ceremony and Presentation of High-Quality Online Teaching Certificates

Join us for lunch, sponsored by Blackboard, and celebrate the achievements of USC Upstate faculty who have completed the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Effective Teaching Practices program and the USC Upstate High-Quality Online Course Design Program. Facilitator: Dr. Lillian Reeves, Director of Transformative Pedagogy

12:30 pm to 1:15 pm

Blackboard for Course Delivery

Deliver Engaging Courses. Blackboard Basics. Screenshots of Blackboard Announcement interface and a screenshot of a feedback reminder automation

Great course design can set up your students for success, but great course delivery requires ongoing announcements, reminders, and small gestures that build connections between students and instructors. Explore the pillars of great course delivery and the Blackboard tools that can streamline and support your instructional practice. Facilitator: Dr. Yamil Ruiz, Director of Online Learning and Program Support

1:30 pm to 2:15 pm

Go for Green: Using the Latest Ally Features to Create Accessible Courses

Screenshot of Ally Alt Text Generator in the Ally interface in Blackboard

In this session, learn about the latest developments and new features coming to Ally in 2027–including adding alt text to images within PDFs, auto-tagging PDFs, and more! Ask your accessibility questions, get pointers, and apply the Ally Accessibility tool to make your courses 100% accessible and meet the WCAG 2.1 AA federal accessibility standards for all instructional materials. Facilitator: Dr. Katie Grinnell, Ally Product Engagement Manager.

2:15 pm to 2:45 pm

Using YuJa Lumina Videos for Student Engagement

Screenshot of YuJa video editor showing captions panel for editing

High-quality, human-edited captions and audio descriptions form the bedrock of accessible video use. Learn more about YuJa’s latest tools for editing and sharing video content to engage all of your students. Facilitator: Diana Hernandez, YuJa

2:45 pm to 3:00 pm

Wrap Up

April 20, 2026June 3, 2026 Lillian Reeves Active Learning, GenAI, Student Success, Uncategorized, Universal Design for Learning

Using AI to Expand Universal Design for Learning

Over the past several years, USC Upstate faculty have worked diligently to revise and update course materials and are well prepared to meet the April 2026 WCAG compliance deadline. These efforts have resulted in more accessible PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, documents, images, and videos, expanding access to barrier-free course content to a wider range of students. As we build on this important technical foundation, we also have opportunities to think more broadly about accessibility in course design, including how emerging practices like Role, Context, and Task Prompt Engineering can expand the adoption of more Universal Design for Learning practices.

Continue reading →

March 12, 2026April 23, 2026 Lillian Reeves Active Learning, Engaged Pedagogy, Faculty Development, GenAI, Student Success

AI Resilient Learning is All Around Us

Thinking aloud is a simple yet powerful cognitive tool that anyone can use. When students verbalize their thinking process, they slow down, clarify their understanding or misunderstanding, and make their implicit knowledge explicit. They’re not just giving an answer; they are explaining the how and the why of the answer.

Continue reading →

March 12, 2026March 12, 2026 Celena Kusch GenAI, Universal Design for Learning

AI Spark Tips: Increasing Accessibility with AI

As all public US higher education institutions embrace our digital accessibility upgrade, GenAI tools can help instructors tackle some of the most challenging images and documents.

Low Quality Scan of the headlines of a 1922 issue of the Spartanburg Herald Journal with deep black lines and gray smudges along the page and on images. — Sample File with Low-Quality Text Scan

GenAI accessibility checking is already embedded in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS) to help detect common issues and generate alternative text for images. But those tools are less successful at converting screenshots of complex tables or flyers with extensive text. None of the built-in features will automatically boost the contrast in your images when words appear in a colorful design without enough distinction between background and text colors.

Enter ChatGPT.

Users can tap into ChatGPT’s robust image recognition capabilities to extract text from images, scanned PDFs, and even screenshots of blurred edges of old photocopies. Then, that text can be pasted directly into your course as a long description for a complex image. AI-recognized text can also be used to edit garbled or missing text in a PDF.

To use ChatGPT as a high-powered Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool, here’s your starter prompt:

“Please OCR this image, correcting for spelling and formatting while maintaining the original text” [necessary to avoid AI-initiated editing or summarizing].
Upload or copy and paste a screenshot of your image or of the problematic section of your PDF document. Text sections work best for multi-column documents.
Then, provide additional instructions if you want the content formatted as a table, as MathJax code, or another specialized format.

The image contrast issue is a bit more complex. ChatGPT does not measure and adjust colors scientifically; it provides you with the most probable image that fits your description. This strategy works best with medium-complexity images where simpler tactics fail. Complex images may be addressed by providing long descriptions or finding an alternative image with a better balance of image, color, and text.

Cartoon of a bookshelf with books grouped by color, included shelf sections for yellow, orange, green, and blue books

To use ChatGPT to make images meet the color contrast standards needed for users with color blindness or other vision needs, here’s your starter prompt:

“I need to make my images meet the 1:4.5 color contrast ratio of WCAG 2.1AA standards. Please enhance this image to reach that high-contrast standard. Maintain accuracy of all text in the image.”
Upload or copy and paste a screenshot of your image. High-quality uploads work best.
Then, provide additional instructions about preferred colorways or areas of the images in particular need of remediation.
You will likely need to refine your prompt to meet the needs of your particular image.

Bonus Tip

Sometimes the low-tech solution can be the fastest. To edit simple images (fewer colors, less text), try adjusting the color saturation or increasing the contrast, or sharpness in Microsoft Picture Format in Word or PowerPoint or Paint or Photos apps for standalone images. When making new images from screenshots in your browser, enable the high-contrast browser extension before you capture your screen.

February 6, 2026February 6, 2026 Celena Kusch GenAI

AI Spark Tips: Using Copilot to Free up Time for Real Interactions

When we talk about generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), it can be easy to focus on sensational stories about deepfakes, AI relationships, or humans offloading so much of their work that AIs are just summarizing and evaluating other AI’s reports. The greatest impact of AI isn’t in the splashy story, though. It’s in the small, AI-enabled changes that can free up hours of time that we can redirect to building human relationships.

Microsoft Copilot doesn’t get as much press as ChatGPT, but as a workplace productivity tool, it can make a meaningful dent in your workload. Copilot is built directly into Microsoft 365 tools like Outlook and Word, making it easy to use in everyday tasks.

Microsoft Outlook Menu with Copilot icons on the left and right

Many faculty and staff are using Copilot to draft weekly course announcements based on your course schedule, identify action steps from documents or emails, build email templates to automate interactions, and turn bullet points into polished messages they can quickly edit and personalize.

Try Today

Click the Copilot button in any Word document, PowerPoint, Excel file, or Outlook email to access embedded Copilot chat. Then, use preprogrammed prompts or ask your own.

The suggestions do not need to change your voice to streamline your workload. “What are some ways I could improve this document?” can point out suggestions for reordering, eliminating redundancy, and even just formatting for greater clarity.

Screenshot of Copilot chat in a Word document with several prompt buttons: "Suggest a list of action items from this file, Summarize this document in a bulleted list, What are some ways I could improve this document?, and What are the main takeaways from this document?

In the calendar document pictured above, I asked Copilot to create an invitation to faculty participants at my university for each item on the calendar. It compiled all the logistical details, which I can cut and paste directly into emails I can pre-schedule in Outlook. I didn’t have to worry about Copilot hallucinating events because this chat is already focused on my Word document. Try out a similar prompt with the Schedule of Assignments in your syllabus.

screenshot of auto-generated email invitation for DIY AI 2/13/2026 DIY AI Workshop-Feb. 13 with text inviting colleagues to a workshop.

Because it’s embedded in Microsoft tools, Copilot can be more aware of the context of your task and can save you time clicking between windows and applications.

Key Benefit: Accessibility

Working natively within Microsoft applications, Copilot generates more accessible content than materials created in another AI then exported or saved to Microsoft formats.

ChatGPT-generated presentations or Canva templates, for instance, can lose all master slide formatting and even generate language errors or other issues with file properties when exported to PowerPoint. Bringing the exported PowerPoint up to accessibility standards can lose a lot of the time you gained by generating your content.

In contrast, Copilot generates PowerPoints and Word documents with appropriate headings, styles, and themes, so your Accessibility Check does not add time to your workflow.

The Takeaway

AI use doesn’t need to be dramatic to be powerful. Sometimes, reclaiming time is the most meaningful move you can make.

January 16, 2026April 9, 2026 Celena Kusch GenAI

AI Spark Tips: From Curiosity to Confidence: Improving Assignment Instructions with the OLC Course Review Assistant GPT

If you’re curious about ChatGPT.Edu but haven’t quite figured out how it fits into your teaching, you’re not alone. AI suggestions for course materials can fall flat when using a generic AI, but you may be surprised by what you find when you use a customized GPT designed by instructors for instructors.

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Course Review Assistant GPT is a first-of-its-kind chatbot trained on education research in instructional design and online and hybrid learning and tuned to OLC’s evidence-based scorecards to improve course quality.

OLC Course Review Assistant. Provides guidance and support for evaluating and improving courses with the OLC Course Review Scorecard with four getting started action cards.

A Strong First Use Case: Refining What You Already Have

Instead of tackling a full course review, start with something familiar: assignment instructions.

Try using the OLC Course Review Assistant in ChatGPT.Edu to:

Clarify assignment instructions in student-friendly language
Ensure that assignments are designed to measure your course learning outcomes
Break down assignments into step-by-step checklists or guides
Create rubrics for grading assignments based on your instructions and outcomes

Example prompt:

“My course learning outcomes are [PASTE FROM SYLLABUS]. First evaluate how well my assessments align to the course learning objectives. Then, offer any suggestions for improving the assignment instructions below. Flag any areas in the instructions that might confuse students.” [Copy and Paste or Upload Your Current Assignment]

Review the suggestions for clarifying your instructions. If they help, keep them. If they don’t, you’ve learned something without risk.

Based on its training in instructional design, the OLC Course Review Assistant will ask you follow up questions that may give you new ideas for supporting your students’ learning with assignment examples, guides, rubrics, and other clarifying features.

Getting Started with the OLC Course Review Assistant GPT

USC Upstate is an OLC member. To get started claim your account by going to the OLC homepage, then click on “Create an Account.” Please use your institutional email address as your username as this will link you to our institutional membership.

Once your account is active, you may explore the OLC site, or go directly to the OLC Course Review GPT through your USC Upstate ChatGPT.Edu account. Go to ChatGPT (also available in the SpartanHub), then login by entering your USC Upstate email address in the email box to use single sign on.

In the upper-left of your screen, you’ll see the OLC Course Review Assistant GPT button. Click it and begin interacting with the bot.

Screenshot of USC Upstate's ChatGPT Edu, with left menu options for New Chat, Search chats, Images, Apps, Codex, GPTS: OLC Course Review Assistant, USC Upstate NSE Department Alt Text Generator, and Explore GPTs

Final Thought

You don’t need to redesign your whole course to begin using AI thoughtfully to improve student learning outcomes. One low-stakes, repeatable use of a context-specific GPT can be enough to help you move from curiosity to confidence.