Assignment Assistant: Support for Busy Faculty
Assignments and assessments are a critical component of any course. Creating quality assignments that meet the learning objectives of a course takes time. CoursePlus has a new tool designed to help faculty with the process of creating and improving their assignments: Assignment Assistant.
Currently, Assignment Assistant has four main features:
Brainstorm ideas for a new assignment: Generates assignments directly aligned with specified learning objectives, complete with instructions, deliverables, and evaluation criteria. Each generated assignment maintains high academic standards while providing a foundation for customization to specific course needs.
Get feedback on assignment instructions: Evaluates pedagogical alignment and clarity while analyzing assignment structure, timeline feasibility, and grading efficiency to identify potential issues with rigor, ambiguity, or overly restrictive requirements.
Build a rubric from an assignment: Creates precise evaluation tools by converting detailed assignment instructions into comprehensive analytic or objective rubrics. Course context guides the generation of assessment tools that ensure systematic evaluation of graduate student mastery.
Get ideas to make an assignment resistant to generative AI: Analyzes an existing assignment and identifies elements that could be completed using generative AI tools. Based on this analysis, it provides specific recommendations to modify an assignment, making it more resistant to AI-generated responses while preserving learning objectives and academic standards.
These tools are a resource that can complement the pedagogical collaboration offered with instructional designers in the Center for Teaching and Learning or other knowledgeable individuals.
Each tool uses fixed prompts to a large language model based on user-provided and course-specific information such as the course title or learning objectives from the BSPH course system. While the tool uses OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 model to generate the output, all data provided to the model is kept private and is not used to train future models from OpenAI.
Because each tool uses a leading-edge, “thinking” model, results are not instantaneous. It takes about a minute to upload your assignment description, to process the data therein, and for the GPT-5.2 model to generate appropriate and targeted feedback (or an entirely new assignment description). A loading bar shows progress of generating the output, and there’s an easy-to-play game of “outbreak containment” that you can play while you wait.
It’s also important to note that the tools do not support interactive chat. Output is generated, and you can generate new output or download the output to Word format, but you cannot iterate on the output inside of Assignment Assistant. HopGPT is available to faculty interested in conversational AI.
As with all generative AI tools, it’s important to keep the following in mind:
- All results should be scrutinized and evaluated with a critical lens that evaluates potential bias and misinformation that accompanies AI output.
- All results should be further evaluated for their relevance and applicability in the broader context of your course, learning objectives, students, and personal resources, including the time available to implement any activities.
- All faculty are encouraged to consider collaborating with CTL’s instructional design team. If you’re not currently partnered with a team member, you can start by contacting CTL Help.
We hope that Assignment Assistant will provide valuable support to faculty and teaching teams. As always, if you have questions about this new feature, please reach out to the CTL Help team, and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.