The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable (TLTR) congratulates the winners of Technology for Innovative Learning & Teaching Pilot Project Grants for 2019. Projects will be completed in Summer or Fall 2019 or Spring 2020. This year’s grants include projects that enhance learning spaces on campus, reduce barriers for faculty work, support development of student data skills, and explore virtual reality to support experiential learning. The winning projects for 2019 are:
New Attendance Application Integrated with Canvas
Robert Denton Bryant, Assistant Professor, Visual Studies and Drew Loewe, Associate Professor, Literature, Writing, and Rhetoric
We propose that the TLTR fund a pilot for an alternative attendance tracking application. The current Roll Call Attendance application in Canvas is limited in functionality for both reporting and recording of attendance. One alternative application, Qwickly, is fully integrated with Canvas and the Canvas Gradebook. Qwickly appears to solve both of the problems with Canvas’ Roll Call Attendance by providing a self-check-in app and on-screen display of full student attendance. We propose that a Qwickly pilot be implemented in Fall 2019. This would allow faculty to test the application and verify that it does meet faculty needs better than the current Roll Call Attendance application. The recent faculty survey results showed that over 50% of responding faculty take attendance in Canvas. An alternative could make the process easier for those faculty as well as for the remaining faculty who currently take attendance by other means, such as manual sign-in sheets.
Crime Scene Investigations (CSI) Virtual Reality Project
Casie Parish Fisher, Associate Professor, Forensic Science
The Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Virtual Reality (VR) project aims to give students an immersive experience in crime scene investigations while never leaving the classroom. The project will be incorporated into the FRSC 3321/3121 (Crime Scene Investigations II) courses to provide students training in crime scene assessment and processing. The goal of using virtual reality in the classroom is to give students the experience of being on a crime scene or within a crime laboratory while not actually having to leave campus. The ability to create the crime scene experience will also aid the professor in not having to locate areas on campus, particularly in outdoor settings which may cause undue alarm to other students, faculty and staff who are working on campus. Broader implications for this project include utilizing the technology to train university police officers in crime scene investigations.
Expanding Use of Wireless Projection in the Classroom
Kim Garza, Associate Professor, Graphic Design and Matthew Steffenson, Assistant Professor, Biology
In 2018, the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable funded a pilot project to implement wireless projection in a classroom to support a Computer Science course on mobile app programming. This technology allows the professor or any student to project any screen at any time to share milestones, collaboratively troubleshoot, or demonstrate completed work, and it has helped to create a more democratic and student-centered learning environment that supports greater levels of engagement, collaboration, and accountability. This proposal is an effort to expand the previous pilot by making wireless projection available in two additional classrooms that are heavily used by different departments. Such an expansion would allow faculty to explore other use cases for this technology in a teaching setting and evaluate the technology’s usefulness and performance, all of which can help inform decisions about expansion more broadly across campus.
Gathering Data Off-Campus for a Non-Profit in Marketing Research
Wesley Pollitte, Assistant Professor, Marketing and Entrepreneurship
This proposal requests six mobile digital devices to be used in the Marketing Research class to allow the students to collect data off campus. The ability to use these devices enhances the experiential learning of the students and is consistent with data collection in the marketing profession. These devices will be first used in Fall 2019 and late in subsequent semesters. These devices will also be available to other professors for various assignments and projects in the school of business. Acquiring these devices is vital to doing the class project with next semester’s client, Camp for All. The proposed project is to conduct a survey with Austin residents to gauge the awareness of the Camp for All. These devices will allow the students to sample the population of interest rather using the current method of the students surveying their friends and fellow students. In addition, using these devices gives the students credibility and evokes trust between the respondents and students.