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Blackboard AI Design Assistant – AI Tests and Question banks

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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 are Blackboard AI Test and Question banks?

The AI Design Assistant can generate Tests and Question banks based on course content and your own prompts. These generated questions are a variety of formats and can be used for both formative and summative assessments.   

Tips for effectively using the tool

  • Select course content items and use detailed descriptions to generate focused questions that explore concepts at a deeper level.
  • Edit generated questions to fit your tone or student level, and review for accuracy, clarity, and alignment with your learning objectives.  

How to use the tool

Blackboard Test 

Step 1: 

From the Test creation panel, click the purple + icon to open the question-type menu. Select “Auto-generate question” from the list. 

A set of questions will be generated automatically, based upon the title of your module or the title you give your test. We recommend reviewing these questions carefully before choosing to generate a new set, as generating new questions will permanently replace the original ones. 

Step 2:  

Edit settings on the setting panel on the generation screen so that the AI Design Assistant can generate more relevant and focused questions. (For more detail, please see our guide – Blackboard AI Design Assistant – General settings.)

  1. Enter an optional description to provide a text prompt (See how to write effective prompts for Blackboard AI Design Assistant – AI Prompt writing) to narrow the focus of the questions. The Description field has a character limit of 2000. 
  1. Select specific content items to provide context for the AI Design Assistant to use when generating questions. 
  1. Select which question types you want to generate. The Inspire Me! option will generate a range of different question types. Or, you can select to only generate the following question types: 
  • Essay  
  • Fill in the blank 
  • Jumbled sentence 
  • Matching 
  • Multiple Choice 
  • True/False 
  1. Use the Complexity slider to adjust the complexity of the generated questions.  
  • Moving the slider to the right increases the complexity, making the language more technical and advanced, whilst moving the slider to the left makes the language simpler and more appropriate for students with less prior background knowledge. 
  1. Select how many question you want the AI Design Assistant to generate.  
  • Selecting a higher number of questions along with the Inspire Me option will generate a more varied range of example questions.  
  • Generating higher numbers of questions will take significantly longer than generating fewer questions, especially when the selected complexity is high. 
  1. Use the Advanced options menu to change the output language of the questions. 
  1. The Generate button will generate a new set of questions based upon the options you have chosen and the content items you have selected for context.  
  • The new set of questions will replace any that have already generated, so it is advised to review and save any questions you want to use before re-generating a new set.   
  1. Tick the boxes against any question that you want to use. 
  1. Click “Add to Assessment” to add any ticked questions to your test. Or, cancel the generation process by clicking the “Cancel” button 

Step 3:  

Once you have added questions to the Test, you can edit the text by clicking the three-dot menu next to the question title. Then, select “Edit” from the drop-down menu. 

Question Banks

Question Banks allow instructors to create, organise, and store a database of questions that can be reused in multiple assessments or exported and shared with others. The AI Design Assistant can be used to generate Question Banks, saving time for instructors.  

The link to the Question Banks page is found in the Details & Actions menu visible from the Content area of your Ultra course. 

Step 1:  

Click “Manage Banks” to open the Question Banks page. This page lists all Question Banks on your course. 

Step 2:  

From the Question Banks page, click the purple + icon. Select “Auto-generate” from the list. 

Step 3:  

You will be taken to the question generation screen. You can regenerate a new set of questions or select questions to add to your bank. Once you have finished, click “Add to Question Bank” (a). Or, cancel the generation process by clicking the “Cancel” button (b). 

Step: 4 

If you have saved questions in a Bank, you will be taken back to the Question Banks page. Your new bank will be given a generic title, which you can edit by clicking the title (a). You can delete Question Banks by clicking the three-dot menu icon (b) and selecting “Delete” from the drop-down menu. 

From the Content area of your course, your Question Bank can be accessed again by navigating to the “Manage banks” link in the Details & Actions menu.  

For further information on deploying questions from Question Banks, please refer to our guide: Using Question Banks and Pools in Ultra Tests.  

Guide last updated on July 4, 2025

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