Funded Projects
| Project Title | Overview of the Project |
|---|---|
| Evaluating a New Undergraduate Curriculum Bonnie Hagerty Nursing $7350.60 |
The purpose of this project is to develop an evaluation plan for a new, innovative School of Nursing undergraduate curriculum. This curriculum will shape the education and professional competence of over 150 students who graduate each year. This curriculum represents a risk in that it is an entire departure from our history that focused primarily on specialty-driven teaching. This is unique, based on an ecologically organized, concept-driven structure that will guide teaching and learning. The structure and courses are organized based on our model and will propel significant changes in concepts, teaching methods and activities, student learning, student evaluation methods for students in both lecture and the clinical practicum, and outcome expectations. The School of Nursing needs to develop proactively a comprehensive evaluation plan for the new curriculum in order to: a) determine the quality of the new curriculum using multiple metrics, b) establish benchmarking for continuous quality improvement, and c) provide solid evaluation data for the Commission on College Nursing Education (CCNE) program accreditation in 2021, for which standards have changed. This project is urgent given that evaluation processes need to begin with the freshmen cohort of 2018. The plan is to create an evaluation task force; engage a consultant with expertise in nursing curriculum evaluation; develop a comprehensive evaluation plan including expected outcomes, quality indicators, and evaluation metrics; and create a sustainability plan to integrate on-going evaluation into curriculum implementation. |
| Working with Graduate Students to Modernize Physics Laboratory Curriculum $5930.00 |
Despite the ubiquity of computation in both academia and the private sector, STEM college courses have yet to embrace computation in a way that will adequately prepare students for their next step. However, the physics department here at Michigan has been working to rectify this problem. This project is focused on working with and training graduate students to develop new, computer based, curricular materials. The requested funds will be used to compensate the graduate students for the time that they devote to curriculum development. This project will utilize the “Backwards design” framework, ensuring that the learning goals of the labs are clearly articulated from the outset. Further, the newly developed curricular materials will have evaluation metrics built into them from the start, which will allow us to measure their efficacy. Finally, we will engineer a specific workshop-style event (to take place at the end of term), which will allow us to disseminate the results of the lab evaluations and iteratively improve the labs. |
| Trauma-informed Practice Certificate for Prospective Teachers, Social Workers, and Nurses Shari Saunders Education Julia Seng Nursing Todd Herrenkohl Social Work Beth Sherman Social Work $6000.00 |
Schools are an important context for building resilience in children who have experienced trauma. To do so, school professionals must understand the impacts of adversity and how trauma manifests in the body. They must also learn to interact with students in ways that are sensitive to the social and behavioral challenges that some will inevitably encounter. Pre-service training in trauma-informed practices is notably lacking, which is concerning because undergraduate and graduate students who aspire to careers in education or other helping professions have little or no exposure to this critically important content. Faculty from the School of Education (SOE), School of Nursing (SN), and School of Social Work (SSW) will collaborate on a certificate program for UM students called Trauma-informed Practice & Leadership (TiPL). TiPL is unique in its emphasis on interprofessional education for practice across the three disciplines. Enrollment of practicing school professionals in the certificate program, along with UM students, will enrich the learning environment and bring examples from the field into the classroom. Completion of a sequence of 3 one-credit courses will result in a certificate of completion. TiPL will have a significant impact on the teaching and learning environment at the UM by providing a space for faculty and students in SOE, SN, and SSW to share knowledge and pursue common interests. Because this certificate will also include practicing professionals, there will be a unique opportunity to strengthen ties to schools and to the local community. |
| UARTS 150: Intro to Creative Process-Creating a More Integrative Experiential Teaching and Learning Environment Ali Shapiro LSA Laura Hirshfield Engineering Katie Rubin Art & Design Jeremy Edwards Music, Theatre & Dance Jono Sturt Architecture and Urban Planning $9570.00 |
This request will provide the resources to redesign and refine UARTS 150: Introduction to Creative Process. This is a required 4-credit interdisciplinary arts-integrative project-based writing course for first-year Living Arts students, a Michigan Learning Community (MLC) housed in the Bursley Residence Hall on North Campus. Themed around arts integration and collaboration, this MLC actively recruits students from the School of Art and Design; College of Architecture and Urban Planning, School of Music, Theatre and Dance; College of Engineering; and the College of LSA. The purpose of UARTS 150 is to introduce students to creative process across disciplines, as an exploration of their own creative process as a lifelong skill for success. The course was redesigned prior to the Fall 2017 semester to formally fulfill the LSA First Year Writing Requirement (FYWR) for arts and architecture students (for engineering it fulfills the "creative expression" breadth requirement). A significant challenge of this course is to integrate the FYWR (academic writing) curriculum into this complex and time-intensive course. The existing writing curriculum seeks to connect with the "making" components of the course through written essay assignments concerned with the broad theme of "creativity." However, students report (and instructors agree) that the academic writing portion is separate from the "making" parts of the course, and the disciplinary sections could be better integrated with each other. With Whitaker Fund support, we hope to co-evolve the FYWR curriculum alongside the making component of the course, seeking deeper and more specific connections between the making and writing. |
| Preparing educators: teaching medical students to teach Caren Stalburg Medical School Michael Englesbe Medical School Jennifer Stojan Medical School Daniel Cronin Medical School $2750.00 |
Historically, despite physicians having a critical role in the education of medical students, residents and patients, teaching doctors how to teach has been an overlooked aspect of medical education. The University of Michigan Medical School has recently recognized this gap and is working to provide core curriculum on education to all medical students. Therefore, identifying optimal instructional approaches for educator preparedness has become crucial. Additionally, the advent of MOOCs has allowed for more diverse curricular landscapes. To this end, our study compares two separate pedagogical approaches. We hypothesize that students engaged in a traditional face-to-face course on teaching will demonstrate improvement in their own teacher preparedness, and that participants in a MOOC teaching instructional methods will have at least equivalent outcomes. Teacher preparedness in each group will be measured by the modified validated METRQ survey (Appendix A) and an Oral Presentation Rubric (Appendix B). Results of our data analysis will provide data-driven guidance for curriculum stakeholders within the medical school for the creation of a new course, designed for all medical students to learn and develop their skills as educators. |
| SEAS of Change - Toward Assessing Student Learning Outcomes of Environmental Sustainability Education at the University of Michigan Michaela Zint Environment and Sustainability $10000.00 |
Following an extensive review process, the School of Natural Resources & Environment (SNRE) will soon transform into the new School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). A Faculty Transition Team Curriculum Innovation Working Group (Working Group) has been charged by the Provost with developing a new professional Masters in Sustainability Management (MSM). To create the MSM curriculum and based on consulting with CRLT, the Working Group would like to adopt a “backward design” process. This process calls for learning goals to be identified first, followed by creating a curriculum to meet these goals. Critical information needed for this process includes understanding environmental sustainability career trends, the competencies needed to succeed in these careers, and pedagogical strategies to develop these competencies. To obtain this information, the Working Group proposes to partner with CRLT to survey SNRE, Program in the Environment (PitE), and Graham Sustainability Institute affiliated faculty as well as SNRE students and alumni. Data from the three triangulated surveys will enable evidence-based decisions about the MSM curriculum’s design and assessment (i.e., measuring to what extent students achieve learning outcomes needed by environmental sustainability leaders from their courses and the curriculum as a whole) and provide the basis for curriculum mapping faculty retreat. Annual beneficiaries include 300+ SEAS students, 500+ PitE students, and potential mid-career professional students who might find the new degree program and innovative curriculum to be value added. This project will allow UM to take a major step toward establishing itself as a higher environmental sustainability education leader. |
| Understanding task allocation on first-year undergraduate engineering teams Robin Fowler Engineering Laura Hirshfield Engineering $5000.00 |
When student teams divide work and conquer, students develop relevant skills and self-efficacy differently depending on the tasks they complete. Most research on task allocation on student teams has investigated student traits that lead them to take on specific tasks. Based on conversations with students who talk about the tasks they were "assigned," we are interested to better understand how task "assignment" happens, to whom it happens, and what the effects of it are (on satisfaction with the team and learning from the project). We propose a set of surveys and interviews, along with weekly project RASIC charts, to better understand task allocation on first year engineering teams. |
| To App or Not to App: An innovative instructional approach to preparing preservice teachers to critically evaluate educational applications for teaching and learning. Elizabeth Keren-Kolb Education Elliot Soloway Engineering $10000.00 |
We are proposing a unique instructional approach in our teacher preparation program, where UM students engage in authentic professional collaboration. This project will improve teaching and learning at the School of Education by situating student learning in an authentic context. The United States Department of Education clearly stated in the 2016 National Education Technology Plan that preservice teachers must be able to use digital technologies effectively to leverage learning in classrooms today. Towards preparing preserve teachers, then, in EDUC 444, we will have them critically analyze educationally-oriented mobile apps that are being used in classrooms, asking if those apps are meeting specified learning outcomes. Still further, those analyses will serve as the focus of collaborative conversations supported by eHallway, a professional, social network used by industry professionals and inservice teachers. This is an approach to instruction that to our knowledge has never been done before in teacher education and will give UM student teachers a truly engaged learning experience. And, by design, our approach in 444, then aligns well with the UM Provost’s call for instructional methods to include more engage, authentic, learning experiences. |
| Fortifying Diverse Cultural Content in Spanish 231 with Audio Mini-Lectures & Conversations Ann Hilberry LSA Tatiana Calixto LSA - Romance Languages and Literatures $10000.00 |
Spanish 231 is the largest course in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures with over 1,000 students taking the course each year. Since the majority of students come from high school, Spanish 231 plays an important role in shaping the students’ experience in their first year at U-M. The course is an opportunity to provide incoming with encounters with a rich scope of cultural topics. Commercial textbooks for Spanish instruction tend to highlight common, almost stereotypical cultural themes, and overlook the diversity of social identities and ways of life that would offer a broader and more accurate picture of the pan-Hispanic world. We will create audio materials to support the development of students’ listening skills, and to expose them to more inclusive topics such as topics such as trial marriages in Central and South America, indigenous sports such as tejo in Colombia or chueca in Chile, urban agriculture in Venezuela, and same-sex marriage in Argentina. We will design this material introducing these cultural themes so that the students will engage intellectually with the pan-Hispanic cultures, and also reflect on their own culture(s) using this added perspective of the world. With pre and post-reflective surveys, we will analyze the students’ expectations and interests, as well as the impact these audio materials have in influencing their cultural perceptions. We will use data from Canvas to investigate the correlation of students’ use of extra audio activities with their level of interest in Hispanic cultures, and their development of listening skills. |
| Integrating basic and diagnostic sciences using team-based pedagogy in the DDS curriculum Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch Dentistry Vidya Ramaswamy Dentistry David Brzezinski Medical School Erika Benavides Dentistry Theodora Danciu Dentistry $10000.00 |
Oral Health practitioners need to draw upon the basic sciences to make high quality clinical decisions for optimal patient care. Supporting this principle, the American Dental Association will implement an integrated national licensure exam as of 2020 testing students’ ability to use basic science knowledge to inform clinical practice. One challenge at the School of Dentistry (UMSoD) is the reliance on lectures to teach basic sciences. Team-Based Learning (TBL) is an instructional strategy that allows active learning, fosters better integration and decision making than lecture and promotes critical thinking. The TBL focus is on application of knowledge with immediate feedback from the instructor; this instructional strategy promotes student engagement and assists in the development of team skills while allowing a single instructor to manage several small groups in a large classroom. Team skills are a necessary foundation for interaction between healthcare professionals. Our intent is to conduct this study as a pilot in the Winter 2018 2nd year diagnostics course and, if results are promising, to implement across the basic sciences 1st year curriculum (Fall 2018-2019) and eventually in parts of the entire dental curriculum. This project thus will provide foundational data for ongoing efforts to reinforce integration of basic science concepts with clinical practice skills in the UMSoD curriculum using the TBL pedagogy. |
| Enhancing Success of Underrepresented Minorities in Graduate Education by Fostering Support and Self-Agency Robert Duncan Medical School $10000.00 |
University initiatives to strategically enhance diversity campus-wide are essential to building a thriving educational community. Every unit, every program is charged with implementing grassroots initiatives to enhance recruitment and retention of historically underrepresented minorities (URM) in our programs. The Neuroscience Graduate Program has seen tremendous growth and success in recruitment, building strong relationships with several undergraduate institutions across the country and undergraduate research mentors with a history of serving URM students. Recruitment is only the initial step toward success. Increasing retention, creating equity, and fostering inclusion are among our next challenges to ensuring success and building a rich educational program for all of our students. As next steps toward success, we propose a set of monthly Peer-Mentoring Workshops that address three Focus Areas: Academic Support, Social Support, and Self-Agency. The workshops are structured around near-peer mentoring with limited direct faculty involvement to create a safe, interactive space for building Focus Area skill sets. The workshops are supported by a pre-post survey instrument to assess student attitudes, experiences, and growth. Workshop facilitators will be trained at two major conferences dedicated to the development of minority graduate students in the sciences (SACNAS and ABRCMS). Successful implementation of this proposal will help foster inclusion and stronger social support structures as well as enhance research skills and build a stronger sense of autonomy over the graduate school experience. |
| Online Components for Intensive Language Learning (OCILL): Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Hindi and Urdu Adi Raz LSA Nilay Sevinc LSA Syed Ali LSA $10000.00 |
The proposed project is aimed to allow language instructors to develop online drills students can do at home and receive immediate automated feedback in preparation for material activation in the inverted classroom setting. |
