Sponsored by the Academic Technologies Advisory Council (ATAC), the Innovations in Teaching with Technology Awards (ITTA) fund significant and innovative projects that have the potential to improve teaching and learning throughout the University of Iowa.
This year four University of Iowa instructors were awarded a total of $86,060 in support of their innovative approaches to teaching with technology:
Sheila Barron was awarded $34,600 to develop an interactive simulation environment to help students build an in-depth understanding of foundational statistical concepts. Students will gain experience in designing research, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions using role-playing in realistic situations.
William Hedgcock was awarded $28,010 to develop courseware to teach students how to use traditional and non-traditional data collection techniques – such as focus groups, online surveys, prediction markets, text analysis, heart rate analysis, eye tracking, and facial expression encoding – to address problems that are relevant to government and business. Students will gain first-hand experience with 1-2 techniques and will work in teams, giving them exposure to other projects and techniques.
Jerald Moon was awarded $14,350 to explore an application in emerging virtual reality technologies to immerse students in the anatomy of the larynx in ways that enable students to gain unique perspectives of both form and function through the delivery of rich media and the ability to interact and explore in ways most meaningful to each individual learner.
Sam Van Horne and Russell Larsen were awarded $9,100 to conduct a study to determine whether a customized ICON dashboard interface created to help students learn chemistry in General Chemistry I resulted in improved learning outcomes. Based on outcomes of the study, improvements to the customizable dashboard tool will be made that in the future may benefit students enrolled in other courses at the University of Iowa.
Website: http://its.uiowa.edu/itta
Since its inception in 2001, ITTA has received 231 proposals of which 73 were awarded a total of $1,236,631.