Before using this tool ensure you have familiarised yourself with the practical and ethical considerations in the ‘Getting starting with Blackboard AI Design Assistant‘ guide
What is it?
The AI Design Assistant is used to create Blackboard Rubrics for Assignments and other Blackboard assessment tools (i.e. Journals and Discussions). The AI generator provides levelled descriptors at every point on the rubric scale for each criterion, which can then be edited to meet your specifications.
Tips
- When generating new rubrics, from either a previously generated or existing rubric, it will be overwritten and cannot be returned to the previous iteration.
- Use the description box to add your assignment outline for a more specific rubric; you can use up to 2000 characters (it may be useful to copy sections of an assignment brief, module description or programme specification).
- Read the generated descriptors carefully to ensure they are relevant to your assessment and programme criteria; you are advised to always check and edit generated rubrics before adding to the course.
How to use it
Follow our four-step guide to generate a rubric for your assessment.
- Step 1: Open the generate rubric screen
- Step 2: Define Rubric rubric
- Step 3: Generate rubric
- Step 4: Continue to the rubric edit page
Step 1: Open the generate rubric screen
Where can you open the generating rubric screen?
- In the Rubric area at the end of the Gradebook settings panel
- In the settings area for the tool, you are using for your assessment, Assignment, Journal, Discussion.
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When the Generate Rubrics, screen opens, a rubric that will automatically generate in the Rubric preview area (b).
You can use the tools in the Define rubric panel (a).
Step 2: Use the tools in the Define Rubric panel to define your rubric
The automatically generated rubric will be based on the course title if working in the rubrics area. If starting the process from the Assignment settings panel, the text in the Instructions text box will be used to generate the rubric.
Use the Define rubric panel tools to design the right rubric for your assessment. (For more detail, please see our guide – Blackboard AI Design Assistant – General settings)
Description
The description field allows you to add text prompts (See how to write effective prompts for Blackboard AI Design Assistant – AI Prompt writing), such as a criteria list or assignment brief, so that the generated rubric is specific to the assignment.
Rubric Settings
- Rubric Type
- Choice of rubric type, percentage, percentage range, points, points range, no points.
- Complexity
- Low to high based on educational level, changes language and developmental expectations
- Columns
- Can increase/decrease the number of scale increments in the rubric
- Rows
- Can increase/decrease the number of criteria
- Advance Options
Advanced Options
Advanced Options allow you to change the language output.
Step 3: Generate rubric
Click on the Generate button to create a new rubric, which will consider the changes you made in the Define rubric panel.
The previously generated rubric is overwritten and cannot be returned to the original.
It is possible to copy and paste the rubric content to another document; this works best if you copy the cells in a row at a time.
Steps 2 and 3 can be repeated to refine rubric and generate a new rubric in the preview screen. Each time the rubric is generated the outcome will be different, even if the settings and prompt are the same.
Step 4: Continue to the rubric edit page
When you have a rubric that suits your purposes, you can click Continue at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
This will pull the generated rubric to the rubric edit page where you can make changes to the working or scoring.
Once you have made any edits click save.
The rubric will then be added to the rubric list and can be added to the assignment, journal, or discussion.
Could this be used for Turnitin rubrics?
There is no straightforward way to export or convert these rubrics so that they can be used in Turnitin. The work around is that the generated rubric in the preview screen could be copied and pasted into a Turnitin rubric template excel document.
This will work best if you copy and paste the text in one row of descriptor cells at a time.
Guide last updated on July 4, 2025