10 Practical Ways Faculty Can Use AI Responsibly in Brightspace

Artificial intelligence can save time, improve course quality, and support student success when used thoughtfully. The following examples demonstrate practical ways faculty can use AI while maintaining instructional quality, accessibility, and human oversight.

REMEMBER: No PII in AI

1. Improve Assignment Instructions

Ask AI to review assignment directions from a student’s perspective and identify unclear or ambiguous instructions.

Read the following assignment as if you were a first-year college student. Identify instructions that may be confusing or incomplete and suggest ways to improve clarity without changing the learning objectives.

2. Build Better Rubrics

Generate a draft rubric aligned with assignment outcomes and revise it before using it with students.

AI can assist by:

• Developing performance criteria.
• Creating measurable descriptors.
• Suggesting point values.
• Improving consistency across assignments.

Faculty should review all criteria before implementation.

3. Create Accessible Brightspace Pages

Convert Word documents or PDFs into clean semantic HTML for Brightspace.

AI can:

• Create heading structures.
• Build accessible lists.
• Generate tables.
• Format code blocks.
• Improve WCAG 2.2 AA compliance.

4. Generate Practice Questions

Create additional practice quizzes without replacing instructor-developed assessments.

Examples include:

• Multiple-choice questions.
• True/False questions.
• Matching activities.
• Short-answer questions.
• Case studies.

Always review questions for accuracy before publishing.

5. Personalize Student Feedback

Use AI to draft feedback based on rubric performance. Rather than repeatedly typing similar comments, instructors can generate personalized feedback and edit it before returning it to students.

6. Create Module Content

AI can assist in creating:

• Module overviews.
• Weekly introductions.
• Learning objectives.
• Study guides.
• Reading guides.

Faculty remain responsible for reviewing and approving all generated content.

7. Improve Accessibility

Use AI to review instructional materials for accessibility.

Examples include reviewing:

• Heading structure.
• Alternative text.
• Table formatting.
• Color contrast recommendations.
• Plain language.
• WCAG 2.2 AA compliance.

8. Support Course Communication

Generate drafts for:

• Weekly announcements.
• Reminder emails.
• Brightspace Intelligent Agent messages.
• Welcome messages.
• Assignment reminders.

Personalize all communications before sending them to students.

9. Analyze Student Work

AI can help identify common misconceptions, recurring errors, and themes across student submissions.

Use these observations to:

• Revise instruction.
• Create review materials.
• Improve future assignments.
• Identify concepts requiring additional explanation.

Faculty should interpret the results and make all instructional decisions.

10. Build Reusable Instructional Workflows

Instead of writing a new prompt for every task, develop reusable Master Prompts for recurring instructional activities.

Examples include:

• Lecture note generation.
• Assignment creation.
• Rubric development.
• Brightspace HTML formatting.
• Accessibility reviews.
• Quiz development.
• Course banner creation.

Reusable prompts improve consistency, reduce repetitive work, and make AI more effective across multiple courses.

Responsible AI Practices

• Review every AI-generated output before using it.
• Verify factual accuracy.
• Ensure alignment with course outcomes.
• Protect student privacy and confidential information.
• Follow institutional AI policies and guidelines.
• Use AI to support, not replace, instructor expertise.

AI works best as a collaborative teaching assistant. Faculty remain responsible for instructional decisions, assessment quality, accessibility, and student learning.