“The innovations I am proposing would create learning pathways that intentionally cater to different disciplinary skill sets as well as varying socio-economic backgrounds, with the goal of improving student performance, fostering student agency and promoting equity across the board.”
Sinclair Bell
Sinclair Bell is a professor in the School of Art and Design at NIU. He spent this past academic year introducing opportunities for students to respond to art and architecture in ways that harnessed their individual creativity.
Bell is one of 20 faculty members who received grants from the Curricular Innovation Grant Fund at NIU. Launched in spring 2023 to support university goals, this program is designed to encourage curricular innovation and experimentation, while providing opportunities for interdisciplinary courses and programs to emerge.
Members of the Innovative Teaching and Learning Advisory Committee and members of the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) reviewed the nearly 50 proposals.
The 20 funded grants represent all seven colleges. Each recipient was paired with a member of CITL to collaborate on designing and developing their projects.
“We originally intended to support 10 grants, but with the high number of quality proposals, that number was increased to 20,” said Jason Rhode, associate vice provost for Teaching, Learning, and Digital Education. “We are thrilled to have so many faculty members participating in this program and are excited to learn more about the positive outcomes for their students.”
A reception held April 17 on campus celebrated these innovative faculty projects.
“As educators, it is imperative for us to continually seek out and utilize innovation when it comes to developing the best possible curricula for our students. Technology continues to evolve, learning practices are ever-changing and programs like this one are keeping NIU at the forefront of effective teaching and instruction,” said executive vice president and provost, Laurie Elish-Piper. “Innovative teaching benefits our students in many ways. This also benefits the professional growth of faculty members, as they continue to learn and discover new ways to conduct courses.”
The selected projects addressed technologies like open education resources, virtual reality and interactive course materials. These projects also focused on pedagogical approaches like interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning, active learning, community formation, trauma-informed approaches and inclusive teaching strategies.
Pi Sui Hsu
Pi-Sui Hsu is a professor in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment. Hsu utilized this grant to improve ETT 231, Digital Visual Literacy in Learning, by incorporating an innovative teaching approach,flipped instruction, into both online and face-to-face modalities.
“Research indicates that with opportunities for active engagement, flipped instruction has great potential to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, increase completion rates and reduce DFUW rates,” Hsu said. “With the goal of cultivating an equitable and inclusive learning environment, the purpose of the course revision is to develop multimodal, accessible and relevant content that can engage students with diverse backgrounds and thus promote all students’ active engagement.”
For the 2024-2025 academic year, the curricular innovation grants will focus on targeted support for developing high-demand general education courses for online delivery. This is a strategic effort to promote innovation in online learning opportunities and to ensure students can complete a fully online undergraduate degree.
Learn more about all 20 funded projects for the 2023-2024 academic year.
