CLT Awards Faculty Innovator Grants

The Center for Learning Technologies recently announced its Faculty Innovator Grant (FIG) awards for 2008-09.

The grant program encourages faculty to explore the use of technology in teaching and learning issues that are targets for improvement and innovation. The lessons learned by the grant recipients will be shared as an important step in promoting and fostering campus-wide dialogue on innovation in teaching and learning. Recipients will present their projects as part of CLT's series of workshops, panels and special events.

Proposals involving collaboration of two or more faculty members from the same department, or different departments in the same or different colleges, were encouraged.

The grant awards typically range from $1,500 to $3,000. More information about the grants can be found at http://clt.odu.edu/fig.

The FIG awards are as follows:

• "Broadcast to Podcast, Video to Vodcast: Authentic Materials as Portable Foreign Language Content" - Betty Rose Facer, Foreign Languages and Literatures; collaborating faculty: Peter Schulman, Paloma Sugg and Albert Marra, Foreign Languages and Literatures; and Alajandro Salgado Losada, Communications, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spain

This project plans to provide authentic materials as portable language content for all 12 languages offered in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. It will be made available to the ODU community and foreign language educators in Hampton Roads. SCOLA (Satellite Communications for Learning) broadcasts and authentic Spanish video clips will be converted to podcasts and "vodcasts" for download to portable media devices. The latest developments in podcasting technology will enhance the study of foreign languages and provide a cost-effective way to bring authentic materials to ODU students using MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning).

• "Multimedia Projects for Multimodal Learning" - Jennifer Kidd, Educational Curriculum and Instruction; collaborating faculty: Peter Baker, Educational Curriculum and Instruction

In this project, student-generated learning resources will be generated via computer-based webcams and microphones. During spring and summer 2009, students will develop, pilot and provide feedback on projects that will subsequently be evaluated and modified. In fall 2009, students will complete required assignments with these technologies. Student perceptions and achievement will be measured with surveys and course assessments. It is hoped that participating preservice teachers enrolled in ECI 301 will develop an increased comfort level with developing technology-enhanced learning resources, benefiting tomorrow's K-12 learners. Likewise, it is hoped that the model will be useful to other instructors at the university level.

• "Online Critical Skills Evaluation and Improvement: A Retention-Centered Learning Program" - Steven Walk, Engineering Technology; collaborating faculty: Roland Lawrence, Engineering Technology

The objective of this project is to develop the first series of critical skills remedial learning modules to serve those students requiring extra-curricular learning support to enable their successful matriculation and retention in upper-level courses. The modules will be designed to be self-starting, interactive and asynchronous, and include self-administered testing. Each module will contain embedded activity and outcomes monitoring for continuous module design, content, and outcomes evaluation and improvement.

• "Integrate Teaching, Research and Technology in Fluid/Structure Interactions" - Jin Wang, Mathematics, and Gene Hou, Mechanical Engineering; collaborating faculty: Keejoo Lee and Shizhi Qian, Aerospace Engineering; and Miltiadis Kotinis, Mechanical Engineering

This project aims to meet the increasing needs of education and research in the fluid-structure interaction problems. Such problems arise in many applied fields such as the ship industry, navy craft operations and design optimizations, and demand significant efforts in education, research and technology development. This project represents a multidisciplinary approach and combines theory and computational methods in numerical analysis, fluid dynamics and solid mechanics with an emphasis on fluid-structure interactions. The project will create an integrated teaching, research and technology platform in which students gain both knowledge and research training. The results will be available to both mathematics and engineering departments.

• "Just in Time Tutoring Educational Resource (JITTER)" - Leanne Sutton, College of Sciences, Dean's Office, and Math and Science Resource Center; collaborating faculty: Lee Land, Mathematics and Statistics

The College of Sciences sponsors free tutoring and study groups for Math 102 and 162 students. In this project, a training guide will be developed for student facilitators for use in conjunction with a faculty-led training program. Blackboard's blog and wiki technology will be used to gather facilitator feedback and insights into how they apply the training they receive and the most effective techniques to use in a given type of study session. The data will be used to create a Just-in-Time Tutoring Educational Resource, or JITTER, a searchable training database for use by future facilitators for training and reference.

• "Trip to the Virtual Career World" - Tom Wunderlich, Career Management Center; collaborating faculty: Laura Czerniak, Heidi McFerron, Alice Jones, Beverly Forbes, Amanda Griffin and Erin Mills, Career Management Center

The purpose of this project is to engage with virtual worlds to provide useful career interactions while limiting development costs. Major employers now have elaborate corporate sites developed in Second Life (SL) to support their personnel recruitment activities. In this project, a protocol will be developed to prepare and move a group of students to the employer site, have them interact with the personnel and activities, collect artifacts and return as a group in the space of a class period.