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 Assignments?
The Blackboard AI Design Assistant can generate ideas and instructions for assessment tasks based on course content or your own prompts. The generated text can be added to the instructions field in a Blackboard Assignment, or copied and pasted elsewhere.
Tips for effectively using the tool
- You can click ‘Generate’ multiple times to generate more ideas.
- When clicking ‘Generate’, it is not possible to retrieve previously generated outputs. If you want to retain a copy, either add it to your course or copy and paste the text into a document.
- This tool is best used for generating assessment ideas based on course content, we recommend exploring the outputs when using your practice course, to generate some ideas before finalising your assignment brief.
- Adding your summative assessment brief to this tool could help you design a formative task that would work well to prepare students for the summative assessment.
- Once you have added the prompt into the instructions field, an accompanying rubric can be generated from the Blackboard Assignment settings panel.
How to use the tool
- Step 1: Select Auto-generate assignment
- Step 2: Use the tools in the Define the assignment panel
- Step 3: Generate Assignment
- Step 4: Add to the assignment instructions text box
Step 1: Select Auto-generate assignment
Create an assignment in the usual way or open a assignment submission point that has already been created, including submission points with the [IC] prefix.
To create an assignment go the to place you wish to create the assignment, click on the plus sign icon to reveal the add content menu, select create from the menu and then Assignment from the create panel, the assignment content and settings page will open, name your assignment.
Click on the Auto-generate assignment button in the top right-hand corner.
When the Auto-Generate Assignment screen opens a selection of assignment prompts will automatically generate in the preview area (b).
You can use the tools in the Define the assignment settings panel (a).
Step 2: Use the tools in the Define the assignment panel
The automatically generated assignment prompts will be based on the course title.
Use the Define the assignment setting panel tools to design the right assignment for you. (For more detail, please see our guide – Blackboard AI Design Assistant – General settings.)
Description
The description field can be used to add text prompts (See how to write effective prompts for Blackboard AI Design Assistant – AI Prompt writing) this would be a good place to add the learning outcome for the module and those for this specific assignment. A large amount of text can be cut and pasted into this field, there is a 2000 character limit (approximately 333 – 400 words).
You may find the Academic Development and Enhancement (ADE) guide Aligning Teaching, learning and Assessment to Learning Outcomes helpful.
The button below the description, “select course items” allows you to pin point which materials in the course should be used as a source with regards to generating the assignment prompt.
Desired cognitive level
You can select your choice of cognitive level, apply, analyse, evaluate or create correspond with Blooms Taxonomy and allow you to direct the cognitive focus of the assignment.
When set to Inspire me three prompts will be generated, each with a different cognitive level.
Assignment prompt settings
- Complexity
- Low to high based on educational level, changes language and developmental expectations
- Generate assignment title – will override the assignment title.
- If your assignment has a [IC] prefix this new title will be overwritten after the over night update.
- Advance Options – select an output language
Step 3: Generate Assignment
Once you have completed the various settings in the Define the assignment panel, click the Generate button. This will produce three assignment prompts in the preview screen.
Steps 2 and 3 can be repeated to refine assignments, however, please note that when you have made changes and re-generate your assignment prompts the original prompts will be lost.
If you want to collect some of the ideas and make a choice, from the different cognitive levels for example, it would be advisable to copy and paste the generated prompts into another document before re-generating new prompts.
Step 4: Add to the assignment instructions text box
When you have found a prompt that you would like to use in your assignment you will need to select it using the radio button (these buttons will only allow you to select one prompt).
Click on the Add button.
The new prompt will be immediately added to the instructions field in the assignment.
At this point you will be able to edit the prompt using the full text editor of the instructions box. Some of the prompts have a lot of instructions and it may be necessary to refine the prompt to be meet the level of assessment you are creating.
Guide last updated on July 4, 2025