Funded Projects
| Project Title | Overview of the Project |
|---|---|
| Non-Abusive Psychological and Physical Intervention (NAPPI) Training for Undergraduate Nursing Students Jennifer Massarelli Nursing Paul Edick Nursing $6000.00 |
Violence towards nurses is a growing concern. Contributing factors can include: working with individuals with a history of violence, changes in mental status (i.e. delirium, psychosis) and/or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In the current undergraduate nursing curriculum there are no teaching activities that cover the specific topic of workplace violence towards nurses. More specifically, there is no current training for nursing students on how to identify potential escalating agitation and aggression in patients. In this project, we will be using the Non-Abusive Psychological and Physical Intervention (NAPPI) training program to teach nursing students a proactive approach to de-escalation and safe management of aggression, as part of their undergraduate clinical education. Using evidenced based, effective strategies, students would be taught: verbal de-escalation, restraint avoidance, and personal safety. During the 2020-2021 academic school year and the fall semester of 2021, junior level undergraduate nursing students (n=96) would be provided with 12 hour NAPPI training and certification as part of their 112 mental health clinical hour requirement. If the program is proven successful, the long term plan would be to provide this valuable training/certification to all undergraduate nursing students before graduation. In terms of sustainability, having faculty at the school of nursing with current certification to teach this course would mean this training and certification can be provided to future students at only the cost of books/materials ($12/student). If provided to all undergraduate nursing students, this education would reach approximately 160 students annually. |
| Putting Physics Under the Microscope Dante Amidei LSA - Physics Michelle Coeman LSA - Physics $9855.00 |
The University of Michigan graduates one of the largest medical school bound cohorts in the U.S. Most of these students will take the foundational course Physics 135-235, “Physics for the Life Sciences. ” We propose here to begin revising the associated laboratory course Physics 136-236 to employ more directly the physics methods for the life sciences in the 21st century. Approximately 800 students will be affected per semester. We envision replacing the standard studies of billiard-ball motion with an exploration of transport processes in fluids, on the microscopic scale. Life science students need to know this, and it is, for them, the natural place to introduce the study of motion. It requires that we develop the microscope instrumentation in the context of the introductory physics laboratory. The program has the advantage of using one apparatus as a platform for several experiments and is a cost/effort efficient way to establish a longer-term program of revision. We propose a concentrated program of work over summer 2020 to kickstart the process, followed by pursuit of equipment funding so that we could roll out at least one microscope-based experiment by Winter 2021. To support the initiation of the project we request $9855, which will allow us to acquire the apparatus ($2777) and support a graduate student to assist in the laboratory (2 months at $3539/mo). The success of this project could be measured by directed questions on student evaluations. |
| Arts-based Social Justice Practice: Course Development $10000.00 |
This proposal responds to the Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the improvement of Teaching by focusing on the discovery and testing of innovative arts-based teaching methods and approaches, in order to develop a course in Arts-based Social Justice Practice. Our proposal goes beyond the traditional “art therapy” for social work clients to explore more expansive principles of artistic creation and experience and their usefulness in the realm of social justice. Ultimately, students who choose to take the course will learn art theories and techniques vis-à-vis social work practices, which will prepare them to teach social work clients the skills they need to engage with art as a means of self-reflection and advocacy toward myriad social problems. This course will complement other developments (e.g., areas of specializations, such as advocacy) currently taking place in the School of Social Work, and will be benefit students in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, and to students from across campus interested in the taking the course. |
| Biology 305 (Genetics) Active Learning Video Project Hilary Archbold LSA - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Andrzej Wierzbicki LSA - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Delbert Green II LSA - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology $9996.00 |
While a picture is worth a thousand words, video can be an invaluable tool to help students visualize complex three dimensional, kinetic processes in molecular and evolutionary genetics. Students gravitate towards YouTube videos to understand complex concepts, but instructors cannot vet the accuracy of the massive amount of content available. The first goal of this proposal is to develop a video project that provides Biology 305 (Genetics) students the opportunity to demonstrate their subject mastery by creating short videos on key concepts in genetics. The second goal of this proposal is to develop a searchable video database of this original, curated and accurate content using MiVideo. With MiVideo, we can link the database to the course Canvas page, as a resource for current students, and can expand access to this educational resource to the wider community, by coupling the archive to a publically available website. A limited pilot program was launched in Winter 2020, with an expected participation of approximately 20 students. This proposal seeks funding for stipends for the Winter 2021 instructional team to A) analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the pilot program, and develop the project to become a key component of student learning and assessment in the course, scaled for a class with 300-400 students per semester; B) coordinate with the LSA Technology Services to develop a video creation and editing workshop specifically for the Genetics student, and C) to develop best practices for video archiving, with the assistance of hourly student employees. |
| Improving Directed Self-Placement Naomi Silver LSA - Sweetland Center for Writing Colleen LaPere LSA - Sweetland Center for Writing $10000.00 |
DSP has been evaluated and revised twice (most recently in 2008). At this point in time, evaluation is again needed in order 1) to advance equity and inclusiveness in the placement process; 2) to enhance learning outcomes for students in courses that fulfill the first-year writing requirement (FYWR) and upper-level writing requirement (ULWR); 3) to improve the placement guidance given to academic advisors and incoming first-year students; and 4) to enhance pedagogy in FYWR courses. |
| ENVISIONING THE FUTURE OF THEATRE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION AT MICHIGAN Christianne Myers Music, Theatre & Dance Rob Murphy Music, Theatre & Dance Nancy Uffner-Elliott Music, Theatre & Dance $10000.00 |
This Gilbert Whitaker Grant will facilitate the means to engage an external reviewer, develop surveys for recent alumni, and provide a small stipend to each of the participating faculty members so we can dedicate ourselves to revamp, and to learn ourselves, best practices moving forward. No such holistic review has been conducted, and we want to ensure certain content is covered over a four year period as well as identify and eliminate any redundancies. A series of retreats with current faculty, reviewers, and a student rep would work to identify short and long term goals, to articulate the mission of our academic area, brainstorm new courses and sequencing, and develop job descriptions for open faculty lines. The second phase of this grant period would then loop in new faculty members as we take a deeper dive into our actual teaching spaces. We wish to examine our own teaching practices and think critically about how we can best serve the students and the department as a whole- all with the overarching goal of fostering a rigorous and inclusive learning environment for our undergraduate students. |
| Training Data Savvy Public Health Practitioners: A Proposal to Modernize Computer Labs for Biostatistics 521 Matthew Zawistowski Public Health $6000.00 |
Biostatistics 521 is an introductory statistical analysis course offered in the School of Public Health (SPH). Designed to foster data analysis skills in future public health practitioners, the course serves a large and diverse audience of >200 graduate students each Fall semester. Increasing expectations on practical data analysis skills have rendered the computer lab component of BIOS 521 outdated in content and philosophy. The current format of closed-ended problem sets and antiquated data simply do not meet the training needs of today’s public health students. We propose to modernize computer labs to an “authentic” learning experience that explicitly mimics the open-ended statistical tasks these students will perform in their future careers. First, we will team with faculty from across SPH disciplines to identify public health datasets that are current standards in their fields and develop a set of timely scientific questions for students to explore. Next, we will design a set of innovative, modular lab assignments that each focus on a specific piece of the statistical analysis procedure. The modules will naturally build upon each other to guide students through the logical steps of a statistical analysis. At the conclusion of the semester, each student will have designed and implemented a complete statistical analysis, from exploratory figures to multivariate inferential modeling, on a modern public health dataset. Our revised lab structure provides hands-on experience and enhances the training of first-year graduate students eager to jump into analyzing data on the latest public health topics. |
| Continuing Implementation of Gameful Pedagogies and Gradecraft in Second Language Classes Qian Liu LSA $10000.00 |
In 2018, our team of four language instructors were awarded an LSA Level 2 grant to develop and implement gameful learning practices into their respective curricula; Chinese 405, French 103, and Italian 232. This proposal is to support follow up activity based on the work accomplished and successes realized from our initial work. The work the Whitaker grant will support is codifying the best concepts of gameful learning for second language acquisition and to build on the previous pilot courses; to examine the results of attitudinal surveys, course feedback, and instructor experience, to synthesize those results, then revise the gameful implementation strategies piloted in Fall 2018 and Winter 2019 courses in the next iteration of course designs, to be implemented during the Fall 2019 and Winter 2020 semesters. For example, one beneficial aspect of designing the curriculum around gameful pedagogies is the ability to take advantage of a variety of different activities, including relatively spontaneous, real-world, opportunities that may present themselves. A successful example of this occurred in Italian, when Lasker-Ferretti added a “mini translate-a-thon” to her course. This service based learning experience engaged the students with real-world, authentic, language allows them to experience practical use of their emerging language skills. Facilitating this type of iterative course re-design provides opportunities for students to engage with real-world topics, experiential learning, and creates space for diverse learning styles, as well as provides learning opportunities that traditional learning courses may not have the impetus to include. |
| Debriefing Training for Healthcare Learners: Learning to Process Distressing Events Together Nasuh Malas Medical School Kelcey Stratton Medical School Kathleen Robertson Medical School Katie Feder Medical School Patricia Keefer Medical School $10000.00 |
Healthcare professionals are likely to be exposed to traumatic events and emotional distress repeatedly during their training and careers. However, many learners report receiving limited or no training in coping with patient deaths and other distressing events, which can contribute to isolation, professional stress, moral or ethical distress, and burnout. The proposed project seeks to fill an important training gap in how distressing events in healthcare settings are identified and discussed. The Departments of Psychiatry, Palliative Care, Clinical Ethics, and the Office of Counseling and Workplace Resilience propose an innovative, interactive, and multidisciplinary training initiative to teach healthcare learners essential skills for debriefing. The debriefing workshop is a 2-hour training session in which skills are discussed, modeled, and practiced. The workshop provides a unique opportunity for self-reflection and active learning, as well as an inclusive forum that recognizes the diverse roles, responses, and experiences of healthcare team members and learners. Debriefing sessions are effective in addressing the emotional impact of distressing events, and can improve concentration, morale, work engagement, and individual and team performance, which are critical components of learning. Funding will allow for the refinement of training materials, assessment of the implementation strategy, and partnership with academic divisions and educators to create multidisciplinary learning opportunities. The project will also contribute to Michigan Medicine and GME priorities regarding learner, faculty, and staff well-being and resilience. |
| Virtual Anatomy Glenn Fox Medical School B. Kathleen Alsup Medical School $5997.00 |
The goal of this project is to create and integrate 3-dimensional (3-D) anatomical images into curated, curriculum-specific virtual reality (VR) experiences for students in Anatomy curricula. These VR experiences will be curricularly-incorporated into existing U-M Anatomy courses and publicly available as free resources by incorporation into our existing web resources. |
| A holistic approach to calibrating clinical dental faculty for assessments that support a “growth mind-set” Diane Hoelscher Dentistry Tracy de Peralta Dentistry Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch Dentistry Vidya Ramaswamy Dentistry Romesh Nalliah Dentistry $9960.00 |
Standardization of faculty, which occurs as a result of calibration activities, is a particular challenge across all of dental education. Dental students must learn and be assessed on literally hundreds of procedures, techniques and clinical activities. At the UMSD as in other dental schools, dental faculty are diverse, graduating from clinical training programs around the world, with variations in clinical philosophies of care. The UMSD employs hundreds of full-time and adjunct-faculty often teaching in different clinical disciplines and in multiple locations, who must be calibrated on teaching and assessment; these factors create barriers to successful and sustainable calibration programs using traditional approaches. Calibration activities seek to achieve “consistent application of protocols, techniques, and philosophies, so the student experience is as consistent as possible.” (McAndrew, 2016). In this proposal, we present a much broader approach to calibration that supports and broadens faculty members’ knowledge of educational principles and their ability to facilitate a growth mind-set culture and humanistic learning environment within the UMSD learning environment. This program will utilize a variety of technology-based solutions to make learning opportunities more accessible to faculty and provide innovative ways to track and communicate the outcomes of calibration activities. Program goals will include increasing faculty intra and inter-rater reliability for selected student assessments and increasing faculty participation and collaboration in calibration activities. Study design and analysis will include a needs assessment, preliminary assessment of current systems using mixed methods, a calibration training intervention and a program outcomes assessment. |
| Anatomy of Sound: Optimal airflow dynamics for producing a high quality woodwind tone Amy Porter Music, Theatre & Dance $9050.00 |
The Anatomy of Sound project joins three U-M Professors, one in Music, Medicine and Engineering, with one alumna from U-M SMTD, responding to develop a modern and realistic vocabulary in the curriculum for flute players. Since we, as woodwind teachers, are describing actions that can’t be seen, I am dedicated to understanding and teaching the “real anatomy of sound,” or, what the body physically does or doesn’t do to produce consistent high quality sound while playing the flute. It’s an instrument without the resistance of a reed and one that requires more wind power of any wind instrument. I seek funding to be able to show each flute student small 3-D models of the tongue, throat, vocal folds, as reminders of how the body is producing their sound from the diaphragm and lungs, through the vocal folds and oral cavity to the tongue, and finally through the lips, thereby teaching the student the role anatomy plays in tone, phrasing, vibrato and intonation. We, as a team, also seek salaries to host, teach and disseminate our findings at the Anatomy of Sound Workshop in June, 2019. This project will benefit hundreds of U-M flute players, from flute majors and minors (enrolled as Undergrad in course MU-139 Freshmen through Masters- course 540 and also to MU-DMA course 891), hundreds of marching band flutists, and will be a new video resource for non U-M music students for whom the flute improves their quality of learning and life. |
| Measuring Sense of Belonging in the Engineering Classroom Laura Hirshfield Engineering - Chemical Engineering Pauline Khan Engineering - Engineering Other $5225.00 |
Sense of belonging refers to how a student feels that they fit in to a community. If a student does not feel that they belong to a certain community, they are likely to be demotivated, have less confidence, and be more likely to disengage or even drop out of the community (Smith et al. 2012). If students develop a sense of belonging in their specific courses, they may be able to find a peer community within their course, seek the proper support, improve learning, and, more importantly, persist in their field of study. There has been a considerable amount of research conducted to investigate how engineering students think that they belong as engineers in general: in the profession, in their engineering college, or in their university at large. However, we propose that more research is necessary to investigate a student’s sense of belonging, specifically in their engineering classrooms. The primary focus of the proposed project is to create and pilot an assessment instrument that can measure a student’s’ sense of belonging in the classroom. Furthermore, the researchers would like to determine the specific factors, such as team dynamics in project work, instructor feedback, interactions from classmates, and course material, that may impact students’ sense of belonging. Smith, Tamara Floyd et al. 2012. “Investigation of Belonging for Engineering and Science Undergraduates by Year in School.” Pp. 1–11 in American Society for Engineering Education. |
| Digifab Process Library Sophia Brueckner Art & Design $6000.00 |
Stamps’ new Digital Fabrication Studio has incredible machines, but there is so much unrealized potential for both student and faculty work. I propose to create an extensive library of inspiring and informative samples that illustrate the uses of our equipment on all kinds of materials. This library will complement the Materials Collection at the Duderstadt by focusing on demonstrating what our equipment can do and by showcasing what students themselves have produced. Arts & Design students are out-of-the-box thinkers who think through making. Students need to see in things in real life and touch physical samples. They need to know what settings/tools/etc. were used to get those effects with our machines in order to gain expertise and be innovative. It is important that this is driven by students’ work because when new students encounter the library they know whatever they see or touch is achievable...they are accessing things made by fellow students rather than exemplar pieces made by professionals. There is also an equity of access issue at play, with students who are less well off hesitating to buy and experiment with unfamiliar materials. This library would encourage more creative risk taking in all students but especially for those who are financially disadvantaged. This library will demonstrate the potential of new digital fabrication technologies when applied to fine art, design, and traditional crafts, encouraging all Stamps’ faculty and students to push the creative limits of this space as well as serve as a resource for the rest of the University. |
