Funded Projects
| Project Title | Overview of the Project |
|---|---|
| Developing an Interdisciplinary Pediatric Craniofacial Surgery Course Utilizing High Fidelity, Computer Aided-Designed, 3D-Printed Surgical Simulators David Zopf Medical School $8000.00 |
Surgeons-in-training performing craniofacial surgeries require rehearsal to understand these complex geometric repairs and to promote their future creativity and innovation within the field. The use of surgical simulation models facilitates the conceptualization and the practice of procedures in an environment devoid of surgical risk. Our research group has developed and validated several high-fidelity, low cost surgical simulation models for common pediatric craniofacial surgeries using computer aided design (CAD) and three-dimensional (3D) printing technology. Specialists in a variety of surgical fields, including otolaryngology, plastic surgery, and oral maxillofacial surgery (OMFS), perform these surgeries; however, collaboration and communication among these specialties are traditionally limited and learner training opportunities siloed. This research study will address several engaged learning outcomes through the creation of an interdisciplinary pediatric craniofacial surgical simulation course at the University of Michigan. Our set of pediatric surgical simulators has the potential to dramatically improve the way residents are trained in these complex craniofacial procedures, and this course will improve communication, collaboration, and teamwork through the use of interdisciplinary education and collaborative learning constructs in the curriculum. |
| Improv-ing Medical Education: Enhancing Communication and Teaching Skills Through Medical Improv Stephanie Kukora Medical School David Fessell Medical School Jennifer Stojan Medical School Catherine Kim Medical School $8000.00 |
In accord with the Center for Research Learning and Teaching (CRLT) call for proposals Investigating Student Learning (ISL), the goal of this project is to evaluate whether the engaged learning outcomes of communication, collaboration, and teamwork may be improved for medical trainees and faculty through improvisational education. We propose to determine whether this training, implemented in the context of a large, intensive medical student course, as well as in a small-group in-depth setting, improves outcomes within faculty teacher dyads and medical student groups. The multi-disciplinary investigative team includes experts in improvisational theater, faculty course directors, and teacher and student representatives critical to program implementation and evaluation. |
| Examining access and stratification in public schools: Supporting undergraduates’ engaged learning about issues of privilege and equity Chandra Alston Education Simona Goldin Education $8000.00 |
Our project examines patterns and trajectories in undergraduate thinking concerning issues of privilege, access, and stratification in U.S. public schools. The current project will analyze evidence of participants’ thinking as they engage with data regarding the ways U.S. public schools have and have not offered equal opportunities to learn to all students. Close examination of students’ thinking and development is needed to inform the development of undergraduate curricula to support undergraduates’ understanding and appreciation of our nation’s diversity. We investigate how the instructional supports of the course (readings, K-12 classroom and historical artifacts, independent and collaborative course assignments, class discussions, and case enactments) inform and influence student thinking about: (1) for whom schools have traditionally worked and for whom have they not, (2) and how these factors are influenced by structural privilege, access, and stratification. We will use these findings in the design and redesign of three undergraduate courses at the school of education and will disseminate these findings to support better, shared understandings of how to design substantive opportunities for engaged learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion at this public university. |
| Investigating Engaged Learning and Transformational Impact in an Action Learning Immersion Program Jane Dutton Business Monica Worline Business Betsy Erwin Business Dasha Peppard Business $8000.00 |
The Center for Positive Organizations at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, has concluded its second year pilot of the Magnify Immersion Program for undergraduates, offering a unique blend of classroom, experiential, and action learning experiences grounded in the multi-disciplinary field of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS). The design and pedagogy of Magnify engages students in learning POS research, applying and testing the implications of this research for their own lived experiences, and deploying their knowledge and skills in a strategic placement with a partner organization. The multi-disciplinary, cross-professional teaching team that has led Magnify has developed this immersion-style format around the principles of mutual benefit in a vibrant learning community. The teaching team is comprised of faculty, students who serve as peer coaches, staff members, and business professionals. Our preliminary results suggest that Magnify generates substantial benefits for students, teaching team members, and partner organizations. Our design assumption is that engaged pedagogy and a positively deviant classroom community of mutually engaged learners draws out students’ capacities to imagine and act with greater potential for their own personal well-being and flourishing. Imagining is an important capacity for envisioning positive possibilities (Cooperrider, 2000) as well as a crucial aspect of prospection and developing the agentic capacity to invent a positive future (Seligman, Railton, Baumeister, & Sripada, 2013). Action is important in fueling both individual and collective agency to enact the kinds of possibilities that imagination unlocks (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). By combining our emphasis on imagination and action with learning at the individual and collective levels, we theorize that Magnify has the potential for transformational impact. |
| A Novel Mixed Modality Approach in Self-Directed Procedural Simulation Deborah Rooney Medical School Suzanne Dooley-Hash Medical School $8000.00 |
Traditionally it has been assumed that the clinical practice of pediatric emergency medicine is sufficient for the acquisition and maintenance of critical procedural skills. However, the relatively low acuity of patients provides inadequate opportunity. In a retrospective analysis at a busy children’s hospital ED (90,000), trainees performed a median of 3 critical care procedures annually, with some performing none. This lack of clinical experience combined with resultant competition to practice these skills, leads trainees to unlikely achieve competency based solely on clinical exposure. There is a need for clinical leadership to monitor individual performance of technical skills and develop curricula for procedural skill maintenance. Simulation is an alternative method of skills attainment that provides practice with immediate feedback to the learner with no risk of harm to the patient. When compared with traditional medical education, simulation-based education with deliberate practice has been shown to be superior in clinical skills acquisition. This project aims at expanding on pilot work through the clinical simulation center incorporating a novel training approach called the “mixed modality module” (MMM) within the context of simulation-based self-directed learning. MMM is an education delivery method that impacts cognitive, psychomotor, and affective learning domains by combining both web- and simulation-based mechanisms concurrently. Through a variety of asynchronous digital modalities (video demonstration, PowerPoint, online text, podcasts, etc.), this method offers the efficacy of rapid utilization of learned skills to cement proper technique with the convenience of on-demand training and the efficiency of learner- and technology-driven instruction. |
| Assessing the Development of Self-Agency, Innovativeness and Risk-taking Skills in Engineering Design and Entrepreneurship Courses Aileen Huang-Saad Engineering Prateek Shekhar Engineering Cassandra Woodcock Engineering $8000.00 |
The term project-based learning captures a wide variety of educational opportunities from freshman and capstone engineering design courses to more user-centered entrepreneurship courses and co-curricular experiences. While these approaches fall under the umbrella of project-based learning, there are several differences in the design, structure and intended outcomes of these approaches. Existing research investigating the impact of nontraditional teaching approaches have not taken these differences into account and have paid limited attention to examining the impact of these differences on student learning outcomes. Guided by this gap, in this proposal we examine the differences in learning outcomes between engineering design and entrepreneurship courses. While the engineering design process and the entrepreneurial process share many similarities with regard to the need to identify problems and assuring that the designed product provides a viable solution to the problem, the contemporary entrepreneurial educational process typically focuses on the front end of opportunity identification. This front-end phase requires students to actively engage with the potential customers (customer discovery) and conceive of prototypic solutions. In our proposed work, we look to examine the influence of customer discovery in project-based classes on student self-agency, innovation and risk-taking. |
| Novel Intern Curriculum in Response to Changing ACGME Requirements in Otolaryngology Residency Marc Thorne Medical School Mark Prince Medical School $8000.00 |
In 2016, the ACGME requirements for Curriculum and Resident Experiences were modified to require entering PGY-1 residents to spend six months (previously three) of structured education on otolaryngology-head and neck surgery (ORL-HNS) rotations. Surgical “boot camp” for residents has been described as an effective tool in competency-based learning tool; however, these typically exist as 1-2 day courses and have not been incorporated routinely into PGY-1 curricula. Given recent changes to ACGME requirements for ORL-HNS residency programs, we propose a full month “boot camp” curriculum that will include formal training in airway management, communication/handoff, common and emergent clinical scenarios, and competency based simulation/task trainers. To our knowledge, this will be the first and most robust curriculum dedicated to PGY-1 residents in our surgical subspecialty. There will be a strong focus on engaged trainee learning, specifically in competencies of communication, collaboration, and teamwork. |
| Investigating student development of intercultural intelligence through diverse stakeholder engagement using prototyping during design Kathleen Sienko Engineering Shanna Daly Engineering $8000.00 |
Prototypes play an essential role in the product development process and enable designers to specify, meet and verify design and engineering challenges. Expert designers have long recognized the benefits of iteratively using prototypes throughout the design process. However, novice designers, such as students, often lack the background to use prototyping to effectively impact their project outcomes. Specifically, most novice designers limit their use of prototypes to one or two phases of the design process and don’t create and/or adapt prototypes based on the geographical and/or professional culture of the stakeholder group they are engaging. We propose to investigate how students participating in design experiences with culturally diverse stakeholders leverage prototypes throughout their design processes and how they adapt the use of prototypes according to the cultural background of the stakeholder. Ultimately, we aim to improve education to support students’ growth and development in prototype usage in design and intercultural maturity. |
| Enhancing student learning in mechanics through the development and implementation of a concept guide Allen Liu Engineering - Mechanical Engineering Engineering - Biomedical Engineering LSA - Biophysics Medical School $4000.00 |
Every mechanical engineering student and many other engineering students take an introductory course in solid mechanics. The use of both force and moment equilibrium concepts on free bodies are basic to all mechanics problems. Yet, there remain challenges with student learning of concepts and skills associated with typical basic mechanics problems. The hypothesis of this investigation is that academic history may not be a good predictor of a student's ability to learn basic mechanics concepts and acquire problem solving skills, but rather analysis process contributes significantly to student learning. Several specific ideas focusing on bolstering student's learning of concepts will be explored and implemented in this work, which include: i) the development of a concept guide for mechanics covered in Introduction to Solid Mechanics, ii) concept reinforcement by students in small groups, iii) utilization of the concept guide for homework assignments and examinations, and iv) the use of models for visualization and retention of concepts. We will evaluate the success of this investigation by looking at student outcome focusing on the learning and retention of core mechanics concepts. The outcome from this study will be valuable to consider the type of skills that our engineering students should acquire and build from these earlier core coursework. |
| Creating a Virtual Sandbox for Intermediate Language Learning in Korean Kyongmi Park LSA $6000.00 |
This project will pilot a program that allows UM students to work collaboratively with students in Korea as part of Second-Year Korean. Our goal is explore how the use of a “virtual sandbox” in language teaching can leverage technology to increase student creativity and collaboration and how these can in turn help students develop the intercultural intelligence that they need in the twenty-first century. What we hope to understand through this project are three key interconnected ideas: how providing a collaborative context for students to actively and creatively use language at a relatively early stage can encourage a less passive, teacher-centered engagement with language learning and foster excitement over learning language for practical use rather than to fulfill a requirement; how allowing students to follow their own interests rather than to respond to prompts given by the instructor will engage students at a deeper level and draw from the interests that brought them to language study in the first place; and how the combination of these factors with the ability to make friends in Korea might encourage students to continue pursuing language study beyond the second year when many students drop after completing the LSA language requirement as well as to consider some kind of immersive learning opportunity whether through traditional study abroad, summer language study, or a short-term program. |
| Investigating Students’ Communication, Collaboration, and Self-Agency in Their Understanding and Application of Core Teaching Practices Chauncey Monte-Sano Education $8000.00 |
The elementary teacher education program at the U-M focuses on our U-M student’s learning of core instructional practices that have proven effective in supporting children’s learning. Yet, we have much to learn about our elementary teacher education students’ understanding of these practices and their ability to enact these practices while taking our courses and once they begin student teaching in local K-5 classrooms. What do elementary teacher education students learn about core instructional practices during our courses? How well does that learning transfer once they are outside of structured coursework and interning in local classrooms? Is there something more we can do in elementary teacher education coursework to support student teachers’ learning? This project focuses on the core instructional practices of modeling reading strategies and facilitating discussion because they highlight important aspects of engaged learning. If U-M teacher education students can model their thinking process as they use reading strategies, they will be able to communicate the skills of being a reader in ways that children can understand. To facilitate a discussion with children effectively, U-M students must learn to communicate clearly, collaborate with children, and promote collaboration among children. Finally, to transfer core teaching practices from the sheltered environment of U-M to live K-5 classrooms requires our students to demonstrate agency and risk taking. This study will lend insight into our student teachers’ engaged learning, their ability to transfer this learning outside of structured courses, and how we might improve our courses to better support such learning. |
| Investigating the Impact of Student-Created YouTube Video on Enhancing Undergraduate Active Learning Outcomes Fei Wen Engineering $8000.00 |
More and more courses in every undergraduate science or engineering curriculum include some form of project-based learning (PBL), which provides students the opportunity to work collaboratively with peers and instructors to design creative solutions to a challenging open-ended problem with real-world relevance and a public learning outcome. By doing so, PBL overcomes the deficiencies of deductive teaching methods and creates a positive environment encouraging active learning, which is statistically known to maximize learning and improve student performance in the STEM fields. However, it is not enough to just do projects in order to deliver the beneficial outcomes of PBL. Instead, it requires an in-depth investigation of how specific PBL practices promote various aspects of engaged student learning outcomes. This information can then be used to further improve existing or develop new PBL practices to enhance the desired learning outcomes in more engineering courses. Towards this goal, this proposal aims to investigate the impact of a newly improved form of PBL centered on a term project in a chemical engineering undergraduate core course, Mass and Heat Transfer (ChE342). Preliminary studies led us to the hypothesis that student-created YouTube video component of the project improves four specific active learning outcomes including creativity, self-agency and the ability to innovate and take risks, collaborative teamwork and communication skills, and social responsibility. In this study, we will apply methods from educational research to test this hypothesis. |
| Enhancing pediatric resident competency in motivational interviewing and behavior change counseling Nasuh Malas Medical School $8000.00 |
Motivational interviewing (MI) is a collaborative communication style aimed at exploring a person’s own motivation for behavior change by eliciting from the person their reasons for change and strengthening commitment to change. MI has a strong evidence base with multiple applications for improving health behaviors in pediatrics. MI is not part of the pediatric residency curriculum, and residents receive little formal education on health behavior change counseling. This results in many residents taking an empathic yet overly directive, overly advising approach to health behavior change counselling with little framework to guide these interactions. Given this educational gap, we propose piloting a "Motivational Interviewing Fellowship" for pediatric residents to teach health behavior change counselling using MI as the foundational communication style with opportunities for supervision, coaching and practical experience. This fellowship will be open to residents, and consist of an introductory workshop, followed by a series of 6 coaching and supervision sessions over six months. These sessions will consist of review of patient interactions and questions by the learner, as well as the opportunity for supervised practice of MI skills in role plays commonly faced in pediatric practice. This program will be evaluated by measuring resident attitudes as they relate to behavior change counselling, and objective scores of MI proficiency based on a videotaped interaction with a simulated patient within an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), and comparing pre- and post-fellowship values. |
| Motivating Study Group Participation Tanya Rosenblat Information $8000.00 |
This study utilizes an information intervention to motivate attendance in study groups – a form of collaborative learning. The study groups are organized by an on-campus organization, the Science Learning Center (SLC). Our first goal is to test the direct effect of the advising messages on student attendance and learning experience. We do so by comparing the attendance rate of the informed students, who receive the treatment messages, to the control group students. Our secondary goal is to measure the indirect of the messages. That is, we ask if there is a spillover effect from the informed students to those uninformed group members, who do not receive the treatment messages. |
