Anthology debuts AI-powered authentic assessment building for Blackboard Learn Ultra

With academic integrity challenged in the AI age, Anthology expands AI Design Assistant to make evaluating understanding and application of course material easier and more efficient

Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, today announced the next phase in their industry-leading vision for AI, centring on empowering instructors to build more authentic assessments. Announced during Anthology Together Europe and set for release in December, the new feature comes as hundreds of institutions across the US, UK, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia move forward with the AI Design Assistant – the first set of AI tools available in any major LMS. Since launching, test question creation has emerged as among the most frequently used AI Design Assistant features.

The authentic assessment feature utilises learning objectives and course material to develop prompts aligned to Bloom’s Taxonomy that promote critical thinking like analysing, creating, and evaluating. While assessment objectives like recalling or remembering are potentially susceptible to responses generated by AI, prompts like creating are more difficult for AI tools to generate and can evaluate a learner’s understanding and application of course content more deeply. The tool inspires instructors to quickly develop complex, situational prompts that require learners to determine the relevancy of information and apply skills, knowledge, and judgement. Prompts can require learners to work together with peers and take the shape of real-world tasks. The result is an assessment aligned to higher order thinking skills and that simulates the context of challenges to be faced in a learner’s future workplace.

“Developing deeper forms of assessment that demonstrate a learner’s understanding isn’t new but are time intensive and are taking on a new urgency as AI challenges the current landscape of academic integrity,” said JD White, Chief Product Officer at Anthology. “By inspiring instructors to develop authentic assessments more seamlessly, we are charting a way forward where instructors can effectively and efficiently evaluate learners.”

The new assessment building feature comes less than two months after Anthology’s AI Design Assistant tool became available for institutions deploying Blackboard Learn Ultra. Since then, hundreds of institutions have enabled the AI Design Assistant, with test question creation emerging as the function faculty and instructors are initially utilising most frequently, at nearly 60 percent of the tool’s combined usage. As instructors and institutions grapple with the future of testing in a landscape that’s been turned upside down by AI plagiarism, new modes of assessment that acknowledge the shifting environment are necessary.

“Instructors are exploring and utilising tools that make developing assessments more streamlined,” continued White. “Incorporating critical thinking assessment objectives and inspiring instructors to develop assessments aligned to them accomplishes twin goals: it more thoroughly evaluates learners and confronts AI plagiarism head-on by limiting its efficacy.”

Like the existing Blackboard Learn AI Design Assistant features, the new feature follows Anthology’s Trustworthy AI Approach to ensure that clients and instructors stay in control and that their data stays safe.