Teaching with AI

Good news! AI technology is now integrated into Blackboard. This is called AI Design Assistant and it will incorporate a number of AI options into some of the menus you are currently navegating in your course sites on Blackboard.

The most powerful innovation is the ability to generate automatically Question Banks based on the contents uploaded to your course.

In the example below, we start by clicking on Create and then Create Item / Document. 

Note that, at this moment, you cannot generate AI questions out of pdfs or materials in other formats uploaded to your Blackboard course; you need to paste the contents as text into a Blackboard document created for that purpose, as shown in the previous example. 

Now, save the document and AI will allow us to generate questions in multiple formats and levels of complexity based on the information provided.  Question banks can be later reused in course tests, assignments or even weekly quizzes to track that your students are keeping up with the readings.

Watch Blackboard AI Design Assistant in action in this video! ↓  

AI tools enable users to create lesson plans so you distribute evenly the contents of your session. This will also ensure you allocate time for for students' participation in a more controlled way.

The example shown in the video below we used the following prompt: 

You are teaching an undergraduate course on International Relations divided into 15 sessions, each of them about 80 minutes long; session 4 is devoted to the European Union, its origins, development, structure and legal and institutional instruments;

Students have only an introductory knowledge of International Relations, mainly their history and I World War and II World War and early Cold War phases.

Create a lesson plan for Session 4; break down all the issues we should be discussing during that 80-minute session, including a few breaks for students participation and Q&A. 

No sentences, only bullet points. 

While one straightforward approach is to restrict access to AI technology with the tools available at IE, such as SMOWL and RESPONDUS a more ambitious aim is to design assignments that inherently defy AI usage. Once accomplished, this would render the use of AI either inconsequential to the assignment's objectives or, if AI is permitted, ensure that its utilization enriches the educational experience of students, rather than impoverishing it.

Here are some valuable recommendations:

1. AI doesn't have to be utilized all the time, much like a delicious ingredient doesn't need to be present in every recipe. It's perfectly acceptable to limit its use in selected sessions and switch to 'offline mode' when advised.

2. Stay vigilant for inconsistencies in content, as chatbots may not be aware of the materials covered in your course. Additionally, AI responses often tend to sound somewhat mechanical and verbose, although this is gradually improving as technology advances.

3. Utilize exam review sessions to your advantage as a professor, you can make use of them too! In case of doubt, don't hesitate to call in a student to assess their ability to support the arguments presented in their work. It's a good practice to inform students in advance that this possibility exists.

4. If AI is to be incorporated proactively in your course, design cumulative work that allows you to track students' progress under your guidance. Additionally, consider formal presentations of findings to ensure that students truly absorb the knowledge, regardless of the sources they utilized along the way. 

As faculty members, it's paramount to recognize the potential risks associated with Artificial Intelligence when it comes to data privacy. This is important specifically due to one particularity of most AI systems: whenever you submit data, the information can be stored and resurface at a later point in a transformed or aggregated form, thus influencing the system's interactions with other unknown users.

For this reason, be always aware of the ethical risks posed by AI and adhere to privacy laws, including GDPR or FERPA. Ensure that any AI application you use is transparent in its data usage policies and complies with legal standards.  And, crucially, refrain from including personal data about yourself, your students, or any confidential details about IE University’s structure and operations in your prompts. 

Promoting a culture of data responsibility and being vigilant about potential data misuse or breaches is essential at IE, and the only path to balance AI's benefits with the protection of the privacy rights of the institution, students and staff.

AI is capable of designing multiple choice tests or essay questions, if provided with detailed instructions (such as the one below crafted by IE Professor Daniel Fernández-Kranz). However, make sure you to revise the outcome before you publish them on Blackboard site.

Designing assignments with AI is pretty simple. Remember as always that, the richer the information you give to the system, the better the results will be. The prompt on the left, for instance, details exhaustively all the different parameters ChatGPT-4 needs to consider in order to elaborate an assignment (right image).