Q&A
7 Questions on Anthology’s Approach to AI
The transformative power of artificial intelligence has led many ed tech vendors to embrace the technology in their product portfolios, from curriculum-building tools to advanced analytics, student engagement, and more. The possibilities are endless, according to Anthology Chief Product Officer JD White, but they must be explored in conjunction with a commitment to ethical AI standards and a keen eye on the student experience. We spoke with White about his company’s vision for AI as well as practical considerations for embracing AI tools in the classroom.
Campus Technology: Anthology recently announced a partnership with Microsoft to incorporate generative AI into the Anthology ecosystem of ed tech solutions. Why choose Azure OpenAI?
JD White: Anthology and Microsoft have a long history of partnering together. In fact, it’s this history that led Anthology to be the first Education ISV [Independent Software Vendor] invited in Microsoft’s OpenAI work. This long-standing partnership, and our shared commitment to responsible AI design, made working together a natural fit.
By integrating Microsoft’s AI features into Anthology’s purpose-built higher education solutions, we are ensuring our solutions are scalable, secure, and seamlessly integrated into existing educational ecosystems, making them easily accessible to our global client base.
Overall, this partnership will enable our clients to take advantage of more AI-facilitated capabilities within our joint ed tech solutions and unlock new opportunities for personalized student engagement, advanced data analytics, and streamlined administrative processes.
CT: What’s possible right now with AI-enabled tools — what are some practical ways institutions can make use of them today?
White: One of the uses we are most excited about is the course-builder aid for instructors in Blackboard Learn from Anthology.
The AI Design Assistant makes Blackboard Learn Ultra the first major LMS to extend generative AI capabilities to instructors and instructional designers, helping them build courses, source images, and create tests and rubrics more efficiently than ever.
The result is less time spent on course creation, and more time with the students. That’s really the theme for the AI Design Assistant — inspiration. The tool is available to inspire instructors in course creation.
Practical uses of AI in course creation include:
- Suggestion of possible course structure based on the context and outcomes of the course. The AI Design Assistant generates a scaffolding of learning modules for the instructor or instructional designer to then review, enhance, and approve.
- Identification of royalty-free images based on the context of the course. This capability makes it easy to create visually engaging courses and reduce copyright protection concerns.
- Streamlining the time-consuming task of creating formative questions leveraging the content or context of a particular learning module. Assessment can be designed to inspire the instructor who can then add inputs and edit as needed.
- Simplify the creation of rubrics within the existing instructor workflow by generating a draft rubric and aligning it with the specific outcomes for an assignment or discussion.
As part of our commitment to responsible and ethical use of AI, all of these features were developed following Anthology’s Trustworthy AI Approach. Humans are always in control. The institution and the instructor can choose whether to enable and use the features based on their institution’s policies and preferences.
