Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize Winners | CRLT

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Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize home page and nominations

Awarded in: 2021
Recipient(s)	Title
Julie Boland Joshua Rabinowitz Colleen Seifert	UMTurk and Inclusive Teaching in U-M Methods Courses Psychology faculty face many challenges as they teach large numbers of undergraduate majors how to conduct research on human behavior. UMTurk is a tool developed by programmers from LSA’s Technology Services that lets faculty quickly create and conduct online surveys, monitor survey responses in real time from a diverse pool of subjects (via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform), and visualize the resulting data. An instructor can thus demonstrate actual research steps during the course of a lecture or lab and engage students’ attention with live results. UMTurk also gives all students an… more Poster
Ayesha Ghazi Edwin	Improving Our City: The Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission Project When she heard a fellow member of the Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission (HRC) express a need for better shared knowledge of the history of local issues and the solutions pursued by other cities, Professor Ghazi saw a unique opportunity for social work students. They could fulfill their research requirement by exploring long-standing equity issues and proposing policy solutions. In the process, the course created an “issue bank” of reports and resources for use by the commission, city council members, and city officials. Crucial to the success of this project were Professor Ghazi’s… more Poster
Chad Jenkins Jessy Grizzle Maani Ghaffari Dwayne Joseph	Breaking the AP Calculus Hold in STEM Many engineering curricula assume that students must have 3-4 semesters of calculus before they can begin solving realistic problems. This gives students from high schools with advanced placement programs a big head start for entering and succeeding in the discipline, while effectively shutting out students from non-AP high schools. Re-imagining the way mathematics is introduced to new engineering undergraduates provides a profound opportunity to level the playing field and enable students’ success to be dictated by their intellectual ability and drive, not their zip codes. ROBOTICS 101… more Poster
Daicia Price	African Centered Practices in the Community and in the Classroom When Afrocentric principles are explicitly credited as a theoretical wellspring for inclusive teaching practices, they can be a powerful means of reorganizing course structures to challenge dominant cultural assumptions about inferiority and superiority that harm both students of color and white students. By centering the experiences of Black people and incorporating Black cultural traditions into Social Work 713: An Afrocentric Approach to Practice with African American Individuals, Families and Communities, Professor Price disrupts traditional pedagogical frameworks that often assume a… more Poster
Ali Shapiro	Creative Contracts: Incentivizing Engagement With “Writerly Behaviors” Contract grading can support a trusting classroom culture that enhances learning for everyone. A good contract makes a course’s design legible and logical to students—they understand each task to be clearly and convincingly connected to the course goals. In designing a contract for a first-year writing requirement course for art and design students, Professor Shapiro emphasized experimenting with writing in support of creative practice. After identifying things that strong writers do, she created a menu of accessible and appealing Writerly Behaviors (WBs) that get students writing more,… more Poster
Mark Cohen	Mixed Reality in Medical Education and Practice Grand rounds is a familiar clinical teaching tool in the health sciences: A small group of learners moves with an experienced provider from bedside to bedside, discussing patients’ cases. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this mode of education came to a screeching halt. Personal protective equipment was in short supply, and non-essential exposures with patients were curtailed. Outfitting a single provider with augmented reality equipment, however, can bring learners to a bedside virtually, using 600% less PPE than an average in-person team. Not only was this safer, but new advantages for… more Poster

Awarded in: 2020
Recipient(s)	Title
Patrick Barry Soojin Kwon	Good With Words: Transforming the Teaching of Public Speaking Although the ability to speak in clear, compelling ways is an asset in every profession and field, the skills involved are rarely taught explicitly. The Good with Words project consists of a suite of tools that teach these high-value skills efficiently and effectively to diverse audiences: pop-up workshops fit into students’ schedules a library of 26 short videos a forthcoming book and massive open online course a growing corps of trained assistants who lead follow-up practice sessions This range of resources lets students select opportunities and skills they are most interested in… more Poster
Annica Cuppetelli	The Gender-Neutral Fibers Initiative: Leveraging the Creative Process for Inclusive Learning Many studio art traditions, including the fields of textile design and garment-making, have traditionally been spaces with reified gender associations, for example, abetting mobility and function for men and passivity and ornamentation for women. Yet the students encountering these traditions today are increasingly interested in non-binary and gender-fluid approaches. The Gender-Neutral Fibers Initiative supports exploration of materials, techniques, gender, and identity in self-directed ways. Students, primarily from art and design, but also from engineering and other fields, are… more Poster
Robin Fowler Laura Alford Stephanie Sheffield	Tandem: Automating Tailored Guidance for Students Working in Teams The ability to function in diverse teams is frequently touted as a key learning outcome, but it is a tough one for faculty to cultivate effectively, particularly in larger courses. Asking students to assess each other can generate more data than instructors have time to review and act upon. Tandem’s novel solution addresses team accountability, instructor support, and the instruction of teamwork skills in an automated system. Weekly surveys allow Tandem to assess each student, and each team, as “working well,” “approaching trouble,” or “needing support.” The faculty-facing dashboard… more Poster
Thomas Schmidt	Trust Your Gut: Retaining STEM Students Through Authentic Research Can introductory laboratory courses give students meaningful opportunities to be involved in research, learn the nature of scientific discoveries, and appreciate how scientific results can be applied to everyday life? Could such experiences lead to better retention rates of students in STEM disciplines? The innovative design of the research-centric section of Bio 173, Introduction to Biology Lab, acts on the hypothesis that exposing early undergraduates to genuine research experiences where outcomes are unknown will enable them to not only grow intellectually but also to experience the… more Poster
David A. Zopf MD, MS	Building High-Stakes Skills Outside the Operating Room With Realistic, 3D Models Classical surgical education begins with years of “book learning” and observation of techniques, and then culminates in trainees building skills and muscle memory by operating on actual patients. There are risks inherent in this approach, particularly for patients who are children. By using 3D printers to create realistic, low-cost models, Professor Zopf and his team shift the early learning curve out of the operating room, away from kids, and into a zero-risk environment. Freed from any anxiety about potentially causing harm, surgical trainees can focus on tactile feedback from hard and… more Poster

Awarded in: 2019
Recipient(s)	Title
Ginger Shultz Anne Ruggles Gere	M-Write: Making Writing-to-Learn Pedagogies Practical and Sustainable M-Write increases learning in large enrollment introductory courses by requiring students to translate key concepts into real-life situations via writing. M-Write has made writing-to-learn pedagogies practical and sustainable by a) developing an automated peer review system that fits seamlessly into Canvas and b) training undergraduates to provide formative feedback on student writing about content. Combining technological and human resources assures that faculty can elicit student understanding of key concepts and in turn provide formative feedback—no matter the size of the course—… more Poster
Matthew Diemer	Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion via Advanced Quantitative Courses As Professor Diemer writes, “quantitative courses are commonly experienced as notation-heavy technical exercises that are divorced from both the lived experiences of students and from larger societal issues.” Students enter his advanced statistical method classes expecting to drilled with complex equations, often intimidated by the material, believing that they’ll never be “good at math.” By integrating issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of the course, this project provides a roadmap for exploring the impact and causes of pressing social issues across various… more Poster
Elisabeth R. Gerber	ViewPoint: Simulating Decision Makers’ Choices in Classrooms and Online Role-playing simulations immerse learners in complex decision-making settings, providing opportunities to experience first-hand the challenges that arise when decision-makers must come to a collective decision over which they disagree. ViewPoint is a cloud-based software that streamlines the authoring and implementation of such simulations, and it is flexible enough to support a wide range of simulation scenarios, from intense in-person, multi-day events to entirely online, asynchronous experiences. The barriers of creating a simulation for an educator, and participating in a simulation… more Poster
August Evrard	Problem Roulette: A Stress-Free Practice Zone Supports Student Success Problem Roulette (PR) is a study service that offers topical access to a library of locally-authored exam problems in selected foundational courses at the University of Michigan. Research is clear that the more students use formative assessment tools, like practice problems, and use those tools over time, the better they understand the material. Because PR is not for credit, students can use it without risk of failure, as early and often as they like, receiving immediate feedback and guidance on every question. In the first five years of the project, more than 60,000 students attempted… more Poster
Stephanie Tharp Eric Svaan	Design Charrette: Hacking Health Through Community Engagement, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Expanding the design charrette model popular in architecture and design practices, the team behind Hacking Health has developed a hybrid model that amplifies the power of the “pop-up” meeting between users and designers by using it to jumpstart a semester-long design studio. A design charrette is an intensive, cross-disciplinary workshop involving a group of stakeholders to address a problem area and to inform design of products, services, and systems aligned with the needs of users. In each charrette event, students worked in interdisciplinary teams with faculty, researchers, health… more Poster

Awarded in: 2018
Recipient(s)	Title
Barry Belmont	Telling Human Stories, Creating Human Engineers Because much of the work of an engineer has to do with the rigorous application of scientific details, typical engineering curricula tend to focus on making sense of how all these details interrelate mathematically and conceptually. The innovation in ENG 100.500 “Biotechnology, Human Values, and the Engineer” is to couch information within engaging stories that focus on the people affected by engineers. Through in-class dialogue, peer-to-peer interactions, written assignments, and classroom activities, students reflect on the relevance and consequences of engineering topics from the… more Poster
Shahnaz Broucek	Peer Coaching of First-Year Students at Scale Arranging some degree of peer support for first-year students is hardly uncommon, but much more unique is comprehensive integration of peer coaching into a signature learning experience -- with as much attention to the development of the peer coaches as to the first-year students. In effect, not just one, but two courses have been created in support of the revised curriculum for the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program. BA 100 “Introduction to Ross, The Foundations for Learning Business” combines an orientation experience with mentoring from current BBAs and an overview of… more Poster
Jesse E. Hoffnung-Garskof	Designing “Problem Sets” and Flipping Humanities Courses What do you do if the science of learning persuades you that students benefit hugely from project-based learning, but you teach a humanities subject that lacks the problem sets around which lectures can so productively be flipped in disciplines like engineering or dentistry? And how do you scale a newly flipped course to serve 60-70 students after pilot runs with 30-40? HISTORY 335 “Immigration Law” created space for new activities by first adopting a familiar technique: clicker quizzes at the beginning of class encourage students to actually do the readings beforehand. This change… more Poster
Colleen Seifert	Creative Challenges: Contributing Real-World Solutions from Classroom Learning At the heart of design problems in many domains lies human behavior. Although college students in the liberal arts are in the process of acquiring a great deal of knowledge about human behavior, they often fail to see the value and applicability of what they’re learning. They may limit their role to one of passive “intake,” or “What to I need to know for the exam?” However, pairing a course with a corresponding online design challenge can activate students’ enthusiasm and curiosity: they apply new concepts to current, real-world problems while a course is running, rather than postponing… more Poster
Megan Tompkins-Stange	Bringing Philanthropy to Life Through Critical Pedagogy Students engage in hands-on grantmaking in PUBPOL 495 “Philanthropic Foundations in the Public Arena.” This experiential learning initiative allows students from all backgrounds to critically reflect on the role money plays in social change as they analyze the historically controversial relationship between institutional philanthropy and public policy. Multiple, and often conflicting, disciplinary perspectives simultaneously challenge students and train them in constructive dialogue and deliberation in order to reconcile conflicting values. Working in teams, the students collectively… more Poster

Awarded in: 2017
Recipient(s)	Title
Sandro Cinti Michael Cole Michelle Daniel Douglas Gelb	Teaching Early Learners “How Doctors Think” in the Chief Concern Course The design of the Chief Concern Course (CCC) takes a whole-task approach to teaching the complex skill of clinical reasoning to first-year medical students. The curriculum guides the students through increasingly complex cases and emphasizes prompt feedback on the performance of learning tasks, just-in-time information and resources, and opportunities to practice recurring procedures until they become automatic. Each case begins with a “chief concern,” a patient’s main reason for seeking care. Cases horizontally integrate content from students’ science courses, but discourage overly… more Poster
Mary Lou Dorf	Inspiring Confidence Through Achievement: Inclusive Teaching in Computer Science EECS 183 “Elementary Programming Concepts” introduces many U-M students to computing and computer science, and its design dispels stereotypes about what programming is, and who can be programmers. Beginning students often struggle with confidence in their ability to succeed. Female students and underrepresented minorities—who are less likely to have prior experience according to U-M data—are disproportionately impacted. Every aspect of the course is created to be explicitly inclusive. Women and other minority groups in computing are represented in the teaching staff, lecture materials,… more Poster
Lolita Hernandez Craig Regester Stephen Ward	Detroiters Speak: Building Community Classrooms A keystone of the Semester In Detroit (SID) project, the “Detroiters Speak” series creates a unique public space for dialogue around several contemporary debates through an innovative one-credit course. Classes are public events open to everyone and anyone who might be interested in the semester’s theme. People from in/around the city of Detroit are “community students,” and are joined by U-M students and alumni who live and work in or near Detroit. All materials for the class are posted on a publicly accessible web portal, and the events are recorded and archived for later viewing.… more Poster
Stephen Rush Amy Chavasse, Yojairo Lomeli, Andrew Thompson, and Herbert Winful	Opening Students’ Minds Through Interdisciplinary “Making” “Creative Process” (UARTS 250) is a course that promotes interdisciplinary learning approaches through the lens of four North Campus “making” academic units: Art & Design; Engineering; Architecture & Urban Planning; and Music, Theatre & Dance. Each term a team of five faculty from four different U-M schools works closely with students to illustrate how thinking and working creatively brings greater productivity, accomplishment, meaning, and richness to multiple aspects of life: academic, professional, and personal. Rotating through two-week sessions with different faculty… more Poster
Adam Simon Peter Knoop	Mapping Possibilities for U-M’s Energy Independence EARTH 380 “Mineral Resources, Economics, and the Environment” empowers students to understand the technical, social, and financial complexities of radically transforming the electricity infrastructure of our campus. Following a flipped classroom format, students are introduced to a particular energy-related concept and given a problem to investigate each week, using the entire Ann Arbor campus as their primary site of inquiry. The problems are scaffolded such that students have the tools they need and produce data independently. Students submit their results via Canvas prior to a weekly… more Poster

Awarded in: 2016
Recipient(s)	Title
Sapan Ambani	Making Every Second Count With Spaced Questioning Technology Time. Urology surgery residents just don’t have much left for studying—after performing surgery, caring for patients, and advancing research. Worse yet, cramming doesn’t support retention of concepts fundamental to the field (see survey results below). Fortunately, personalized learning technology can a) keep track of what material each student has mastered and b) schedule periodic testing of remaining content. Best of all, spaced questioning can actually increase retention up to two years. Here’s how it works. At any spare moment, residents access a web-based app, answer two daily… more Poster
David Chesney	Developing Software Systems for Children with Disabilities Creating opportunities for students to engage deeply with “real-world” problems has long been recognized as a high-impact teaching practice. In EECS 481, the innovation lies in the web of relationships that connect undergraduates in the capstone software engineering course with a child (identified by CS Mott Children’s Hospital) who could benefit from assistive technologies. Students learn about a specific disability selected for the semester from clinical faculty and through interaction with the child and family. After an overview of cutting-edge technologies, each student writes a one-… more Poster
Brian Coppola	Improving Instruction and Nurturing Future Science Educators Launched in 2014, the Chemical Sciences at the Interface of Education (CSIE\|UM) program models a way to institutionalize faculty-led engagement in instructional development throughout a department. Faculty form teaching groups (analogous to research groups) supported by internal funding and the administrative leadership of a new Associate Chair for Educational Development and Practice. In turn, the teaching groups bring together undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral associates to undertake meaningful projects that also develop their professional skills. Below are… more Poster
David Hughes Lisa Leininger Rishindra Reddy Susan Ryszawa Gurjit Sandhu	Debriefing Students’ Clinical Skills With the Minute Feedback System When cutting into a human body, surgery students and their supervisors appropriately focus their full attention on the patient. Providing high quality feedback on a student’s performance in the moment is understandably a lower priority. But if there is no mechanism for pursuing feedback after the fact, the teachable moment evaporates, impeding learning and frustrating students, administrators, and faculty. Using Qualtrics survey software, the Minute Feedback System makes it quick and easy for students to request feedback on a specific aspect of their clinical care via the web. The… more Poster
Fei Wen	Identify-Solve-Broadcast Students’ Own Mass and Heat Transport Phenomena Supporting students in the production of work that will be valued by real audiences, not just a grader, is a hallmark of innovative teaching. In 2012, Chemical Engineering 342 won a TIP award by challenging students to demonstrate heat and mass transfer principles for visiting high schoolers. In 2014, ChE342 students took demos of heat and mass transfer to the next level by creating YouTube videos, a multimedia assignment. Students respond enthusiastically to meaningful opportunities for autonomy and creativity. Careful scaffolding of the video project process by the instructor can… more Poster

Awarded in: 2015
Recipient(s)	Title
Jill Halpern	Calculus in the Commons: Bringing Math to Life When students can make meaningful connections to abstract material, they learn more. In Jill Halpern’s project-based sections of U-M’s introductory math sequence, students trek to the Nichols Arboretum to see Fibonacci’s sequence at work in nature. Or they explore the meaning of a difficult concept like halflife through the radiometric dating of dinosaurs in the Museum of Natural History. Beyond providing a realistic context for computations, venturing out of the classroom can engage students both intellectually and emotionally by: increasing understanding, retention, and motivation,… more Poster
Zachary London	Teaching Medical Reasoning with EMG Whiz A web-based simulator, EMG Whiz challenges medical residents and fellows to plan efficient sequences of electromyography tests in order to diagnose nerve and muscle disorders. Training recommendations call for neurologists and physiatrists to perform and interpret 200 complete electrodiagnostic evaluations during their residencies or fellowships. Although hands-on, clinical experience enables trainees to become adept at making common diagnoses, trainees are unlikely to get enough practice with less commonly seen diseases to be able to identify them with confidence, let alone to do so… more Poster
Richard Norton	Generating Multidisciplinary Synergies Across Community-Engaged Courses In U-M’s decentralized academic setting, a huge challenge for community engaged learning is that students and faculty from multiple disciplines sometimes work with the same community without ever being aware of each other’s projects. Changing this dynamic by coordinating across programs is not easy, but the payoffs are profound. When practicums from different schools deliberately focus on a single site, students develop a capacity for collaborating thoughtfully with peers from other disciplines, and communities benefit from better-rounded analyses and proposals. Student Comments… more Poster
Burgunda Sweet	Teaching Teamwork and Interprofessional Practice in Healthcare Interprofessional education (IPE) is increasingly viewed by both international health organizations and higher education accreditation bodies as a prerequisite to achieving the “Triple Aim” of improving the patient experience of care, increasing the overall health of communities, and reducing the per capita costs of health care. In response, leaders of five health science schools at U-M agreed in 2014 to jointly prepare their students for such a future by developing a new course, Team-Based Clinical Decision Making. Launched in winter 2015, this course serves more than 250 students from… more Poster

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