TIPS for Teaching

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.