In 2006, 19 proposals were submitted to the Innovations in Teaching with Technology Awards. The Academic Technology Advisory Council awarded a total of $72,800 for the following four proposals.
Using Personal Response Systems to Improve Learning Outcomes in Large Lecture Courses
Beth Ingram, UI Department of Economics, and Ken Brown, UI Department of Management and Organizations, were awarded $19,350 to use the personal response system in two courses in the spring, 6E:071 Statistics for Strategy Problems and 6J:048 Introduction to Management, to encourage students to attend lecture and engage in the content presented. We envision that the successful use of the technology in these two courses will encourage other lecturers to incorporate their use into other large-lecture courses.
Developing a Curriculum for Statistical Analysis of Spatiotemporal Data Using Cyberinfrastructure
Marc Armstrong, UI Department of Geography; Brian Smith, UI Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science; Shaowen Wang, UI Department of Biostatistics, Jun Yan, Information Technical Services, received $26,000 to use GISolve to develop several portlets that encapsulate spatial statistics methods. The PI and co-PIs have collaborated since 2004 to produce a TeraGrid GIScience Gateway for geographic information science, called GISolve. It provides a web interface through which a user may upload a dataset, select an appropriate analysis method, specify any needed parameters, and access TeraGrid computing resources to carry out the analysis and deliver the results.
The Atlas of Early Printing: An Electronic Presentation of Historical Information
Gregory Prickman, UI Libraries, received $9,950 for a project that will create an electronic atlas depicting the spread of printing throughout Europe in the first 50 years following the invention of the printing press (1450-1501). The atlas will be viewable online through an easy-to-use website that will show a user the towns where printing had been established in each year of the fifty-year period, while displaying information regarding the first printer and the first book printed in each town. These maps will be transformed into a more detailed atlas when images are simultaneously displayed containing other cultural factors locations of paper mills, universities, and monasteries; common trading routes, market towns, and transportation networks; and political conflicts creating a customizable view of historical information. The Atlas of Early Printing will also establish a model for the visual display of cultural events that can be replicated for other historical time periods and topics.
Online, Self-Paced, Practice-Focused Engineering Programming
Geb Thomas, Joe Reinhardt, John Robinson, and Terry Braun, UI College of Engineering, received $17,500 to make Engineering Problem Solving II (59:006) a large-lecture format, mandatory course an interesting, stimulating, and innovative educational experience by changing the manner in which it is taught. By making this an online course, students will be able to experiment with new programming techniques immediately after the ideas are presented, rather than waiting between the time the idea is introduced in lecture and the time they can try the idea out in the computer lab.