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Innovation grants unleash faculty creativity

May 23, 2023

Every semester brings ripples of innovation across campus. In the academic year ahead, those ripples will be replaced with a tidal wave of new approaches to existing classes  thanks to the Curricular Innovation Grants awarded to faculty this month.

Announced in February, by Provost Beth Ingram, the program was created to promote  experimentation with innovative teaching methods such as transdisciplinary learning, virtual reality, digital learning, active learning, inclusive teaching practices, open education resources or techniques introduced in the ACUE course on Effective Teaching Practices.

“One of the things that we learned from COVID was that we had a lot of faculty out there with good ideas on how to innovate in their classrooms,” said Provost Beth Ingram. “They are forward-looking and always thinking about ways to help their students succeed. This was a way to not only encourage them to try new things, but to also provide them with some support while they did so.”

The idea also aligns with the university goal to remove barriers that inhibit transdisciplinary scholarship and experimentation. Within that goal was the kernel of an idea for the grants with a timeline that suggested starting the program next year. The staff at the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) had other ideas and was able to launch the program this spring. That group’s enthusiasm was more than matched by faculty across campus.

“We were expecting maybe a dozen applications, but we got 48!” says Jason Rhode, the associate vice provost who oversees CITL. “Initially we planned to fund 10 grants, but we had such an overwhelming response that we went to Provost Ingram and showed her the kind of responses we were getting, and she said, ‘Let’s find a way to fund as many as we can.’”

The applications were reviewed by CITL’s Innovative Teaching and Learning Committee and in all 20 faculty, representing all seven colleges on campus received the grants which come with a $5,000 stipend and up to $500 for materials to develop novel approaches to old classes. The recipients are also paired with a staff member in CITL who will collaborate and help to trouble shoot ideas.

A complete list of those projects, with details about each, can be found on the CITL website.

All of the projects are intended to improve student outcomes. The classes to be re-thought range from large lectures for first-year students to small workshops for upperclassmen and law students.  Many of the projects focus on restructuring courses to include new teaching approaches such as active learning and inclusive teaching approaches and other topics covered during professional development sessions offered by CITL.

Other programs are more technologically oriented. For instance, Sinclair Bell, who teaches in the School of Art and Design, took this as an opportunity to completely rethink the Introduction to World Art Course he has taught for 14 years. One way he will do so is through the inclusion of virtual reality experience that will allow students to experience art as if they were viewing it in person. Farah Ishaq will use VR technology to give her students “near practical” experiences on facility and sports management across professional, intercollegiate and international levels, with an emphasis on event, crowd and risk management.

Some, like Biagio Palese  in the College of Business and Jifu Tan in the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, are creating interactive text books and notebooks to assist students with programming, while others, like Christina Cline in Biological Sciences, are using their grant to replace text books and other required materials with free alternatives to eliminate the cost barriers that some students confront.

Many recipients are using their grants to make their courses interdisciplinary. For instance, Vera Lind in History is redesigning her History of the Western World course in a culturally responsive way that uses painting, sculpture, geography, music and other approaches to help students better connect with and understand the content of the course. Kevin Martin, an engineering professor who teaches a variety of classes on green energy, plans to restructure three course so that they require students from different disciplines to undertake a six-to-eight week project to solve a sustainable energy challenge from a variety of perspectives including the technical, environmental and even social justice aspects.

Faculty who received the awards will now spend the summer working on their innovations and will teach the class in the academic year ahead. As part of the grant agreement, recipients must teach the revamped course at least twice and evaluate whether it improved student outcomes. A poster session or some other showcase where recipients can share their revamped courses with campus is planned for next spring. The hope is that this initial group of recipients will help others to find ways to innovate their classes.

“We hope that they will inspire others and inform the types of practices that we can recommend other faculty adopt approaches pioneered by this group,” said Stephanie Richter, director of Teaching Excellence & Support within CITL.

Doing so is crucial, says Rhode.

“If you think about how quickly our society is advancing, it is vital for us as an institution to keep pushing that envelope of knowledge and being creative in our  approaches,” he said. “We need to be using the latest technology to best engage our students where they are at. If we aren’t doing that, students will find someone else who is.”