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

AI Spark Tips: Generating Grading Rubrics with AI

Within your Blackboard learning management system (LMS) platform, you can use AI to generate rubrics specifically matched to your assignment instructions and the learning outcomes of your course. As you create an assignment, just click Add Rubric, then generate Rubric to reach the AI rubric interface.

Cut and paste assignment instructions, course outcomes, and even a Word document table of an existing rubric, then set the parameters for the ways you wish to assess your students’ work, such as points v. percentage, performance categories, number of evaluation criteria. Finally, edit the performance descriptions to make the rubric work well for both you and your students.

Bonus Tip: Grading assignments using a rubric can streamline your grading workflow and decrease the amount of time spent on grading. Use rubric performance descriptions to explain the typical issues seen at that level of performance to avoid repeating the same kinds of comments in your personalized feedback to each student.

Learn more about Blackboard’s Rubric Generation with AI Design Assistant.

Screenshot of AI Design Assistant for Rubrics in Blackboard.
Students walking around an imaginary college landscape with buildings, books, and larger-than-life computers.

AI Spark Tips: NotebookLM for Multimedia Research

Google’s NotebookLM can be an innovative partner as you design instructional materials. Upload up to 20 sources–including YouTube videos and audio files–then ask NotebookLM to create summaries, notes, assessment questions, and even an AI-generated podcast conversation based on the sources you select.

It is important to be attentive to FERPA, data privacy, copyright and intellectual property laws and policies as you select sources to load into NotebookLM. Open Educational Resources, publicly-available and public domain sources, and materials you design are all great options for sources to include.

Bonus Tip: Share your notebooks with colleagues and collaborators who can edit materials in a shared project, or share view and interaction access with students to create an interactive learning experience covering multiple course sources in different formats.

Learn more at NotebookLM.

Screenshot of central panel of Google's NotebookLM sample notebook, including an overview and chat interface.

For more information about Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence, please check out the Instructor’s Guide to Generative Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom (login to Spartan Hub with your USC Upstate email username and password) and our university policies on Responsible Use of Data, Technology, and User Credentials.

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

AI Spark Tips: Personalize Student Coaching with AI

ContactNord’s AI Tutor Pro offers students opportunities to chat with AI to either check their knowledge and skills or deepen their knowledge on a topic. Students select their learning level (e.g., undergraduate or graduate), level of difficulty (introductory through advanced), their preferred language, and the topic or content they wish to explore.

AI Tutor Pro follows guidelines for coaching learners, not providing them answers, so instructors can trust that this interface will not write a paper for a student.

Bonus: At the end of their AI tutoring session, students can download their chat transcript and turn it in as an assignment in your course. Ask learners to add a reflection about the AI’s accuracy and/or bias to prompt students to think critically about the strengths and limitations of AI.

Learn More at AI Tutor Pro.

Screenshot of AI Tutor Pro by Contact Nord. Chat asks learners to "Help me learn more about...."
Students walking around an imaginary college landscape with buildings, books, and larger-than-life computers.

AI Spark Tips: AI Conversations for Students

Guide students to prepare for interviews, debates, or meetings with marketing clients, patients in healthcare settings, or other professionals in your discipline using artificial intelligence. The AI Conversation tool, built into your Blackboard course, enables students to work with AI in a controlled environment. You set the topic, you define the conversation persona, select Role Play and read a record of your students’ chat.

Bonus: Your persona may be instructed to speak in languages other than English, and you may give them location-specific backgrounds to support learning in world language courses.

At the end of their chat, students respond to a reflection question you design to help them apply critical thinking and ethics to their AI use.

Learn More at Blackboard.

Blackboard Day 2025: Reaching Greater Heights with AI and Universal Design

Join us for our 5th Annual Blackboard Day in the College of Arts & Sciences Building, by accessing Zoom in the CAIFS PD Course, or by using the Zoom Link!

Register Now


9 am to 9:30 am

Welcome and Blackboard Learn Ultra Updates

Blackboard Learn Ultra ExploreJoin the Blackboard Support Team to learn what is new in the Blackboard Learn Ultra Road Map for Spring-Fall 2025.

Look for new release conditions, AI Debates, Achievements, Competency-Based Learning, and much more!


9:45 am to 10:30 am

Blackboard Learn Ultra Instructional Materials

Content Blocks and Knowledge Checks: Blackboard Learn Ultra BasicsLet’s dive into Ultra and learn our way around the updated content design options.  Use blocks to place media and text side-by-side. Or explore Knowledge Check features that can keep students engaged with course content. Facilitator: Jennifer Bland, Learning Experience Designer.


10:45 am to 11:30 am

Grading and Plagiarism Checking in Blackboard Learn Ultra

Gradebook Screenshot Blackboard Learn Ultra BasicsLooking for your Needs Grading list or how to drop the lowest quiz grade? In this session, we’ll get to know the Ultra Gradebook and where to find all the features you need. We’ll also explore a range of question analytics, plagiarism reports, and student support features for accommodations, extensions, and exemptions in the Ultra Gradebook. Facilitator: Celena Kusch, Executive Director, Academic Innovation & Faculty Support.

11:45 am to 12:30 pm

Using Activity Reports for Student Success

Activity Reports and Progress CheckingThis presentation will look at the Blackboard Ultra features, like progress checking and activity reports, that allow faculty to easily monitor student engagement and performance in real-time. By regularly reviewing student course participation and performance and communicating with students about how they’re doing, instructors have a strong opportunity to foster student success and persistence. Facilitator: Lillian Reeves, Director of Transformative and Inclusive Pedagogy.


12:30 pm to 1:15 pm

Lunch

Small chalkboard with the word BreakTake a break, and drop by CASB, Room 117, with your laptop for lunch, brainstorming and troubleshooting within your course.

Do you need a sandbox course for playing around in Blackboard Learn Ultra Course View? Email academicinnovation@uscupstate.edu.


1:15 pm to 2:00 pm

Course Design in a GenAI Learning Environment

Computer animated hand reaching out to a human hand reminiscent of Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine ChapelAnthology, Blackboard’s parent company, has partnered with Microsoft Artificial Intelligence (AI) to develop easy-to-use tools enhanced by generative artificial intelligence and large language models. In this session, we will go over several key AI Design Assist tools and AI-based assignment options. Facilitator: Yamil Ernesto Ruiz, Director of Online Learning and Program Support


2:15 pm to 3:00 pm

Let’s Talk Teaching: Blackboard Course Design Q&A

Join us for Let's Talk Teaching, a space for discussion, questions, and sharingShare your question, ideas, and course design dreams. How can the USC Upstate Syllabus Template help you streamline your course setup and conversion to a new term?


Sample Assignment statements for AI prohibited, allowed with attribution, and encouraged with attribution. Full text is available in the associated blog post.

Navigating the Future of Learning with Gen AI

As Gen AI (GAI) tools proliferated across the globe during the last few semesters, did you find yourself panicked, excited, or feeling a bit of both? Were you overwhelmed by the implications for academic integrity or overcome by a sense of wonder at the boundless potential to innovate our teaching, learning, and research? Your reactions are likely to guide your AI Use policies in your classrooms. Here’s how to communicate your expectations clearly to your students.

Continue reading “Navigating the Future of Learning with Gen AI”