Summer Instructional Development Fellowships

Kim Arnold
Chemistry

To increase student success and equity, we propose an overdue restructuring of content in the first two courses in the introductory chemistry sequence (C103/C117). Although evidence-based teaching practices are utilized in these courses, there exists a high DFW rate of 24%, which increases to 50% for minoritized groups in C103. Content revision of these critical introductory courses has not occurred in two decades. Backward design principles will be used to create curriculum-mapped course materials. An outcome of this work will be a set of student learning outcomes, assessment items, assignments, and resources that support student achievement and preparedness to succeed in C103 and the subsequent C117 course.

Jim Davis
Physiology, IU School of Medicine

PHSL-P 215 (Basic human physiology) impacts many students from several programs across campus. Current enrollment is 300 students/semester which will increase to 500 students/semester starting during the Fall 2023 semester. Most of this increased enrollment will be come from pre-nursing students who are primarily freshmen. To best serve them, as well as the entire class, PHSL-P 215 will pivot from a traditional lecture-based classroom to a flipped classroom.

Outcomes: Early outcomes include statistically significant improvements on Exam 1 scores and an increase in second-block attendance from 45% to 80%.

Michael Hill
Mathematics

Math M119, Brief Survey of Calculus, currently serves over 3,400 students in an academic year, and an additional 150+ in summer. It is a required course for many courses of study, including Business and several programs in the Life Sciences, Economics, and other disciplines. Many students struggle due to poor preparation in Precalculus, especially on topics like exponential functions and logarithms. Currently, this review material is covered at a very fast pace during the first three weeks of the course.

This proposal aims to replace this review model with ‘Just in Time’ (JIT) teaching methods. When combined with previously SIDF-supported (summer ’22) revisions to the curriculum in the prequel course Math-M 125 Precalculus, these proposed innovations make headway on both improving student success rates and making M119 more accessible to students whose preparation measured by placement scores falls below Recommended but above Required.

Outcomes: Michael has piloted the Edfinity platform for providing JIT homework assignments, and early indicators suggest higher class GPA and lower DFW rates, although he is investigating further to determine how much of these improvements are attibutable to his various course changes and/or external factors.

Kyle Kercher
Kinesiology

The objective of the proposed project is to develop Introduction to Sport-Based Youth Development, an innovative service-learning course designed to provide students with an essential level of sport-based youth development competency and original research opportunities. Development of this course is an essential component of launching Hoosier Sport, a sustainable, mutually beneficial campus-community partnership that uses the power of sport to connect and empower partners from Indiana University’s School of Public Health-Bloomington and multiple under-resourced school districts. The proposed course will be the initial service-learning and capacity building course in the youth sport management sector of Indiana University’s Sport Management program.

Outcomes: In preparation for a Fall 2024 course launch, Kyle has designed the course content and established the partnerships needed for this community-engaged learning opportunity.

Erin Lynch
Speech and Hearing Sciences

This proposal aims to restructure introductory hearing science and audiology courses from theory-first to reflective-practice models of education at the undergraduate (S375: Hearing Science) and graduate level (S516: Introduction to Audiological Testing). Reflective-Practice supports: 1) reorganization of content delivery (e.g., discussing relevance/application first), 2) implementation of learning gain measurements beyond quantitative performance such as pre- and post-course confidence assessments, and 3) curricular modifications driven by strengths or weaknesses identified by student learning gains. Goals following these adjustments are to make content more accessible, reach wider populations of students, and improve preparedness for graduate as well as professional careers.

Juan Mora
History, Latino Studies Program

Although Latinxs are often portrayed as a “new” group of migrants to the Midwest, “The History of the Latinx Midwest” examines the century-long presence of Latinxs in the region. This proposal seeks to redevelop the course from one that fulfills the Intensive Writing (IW) requirement to a higher-enrolled one that incorporates a range of creative activities. Assignments based on podcasting/digital mapping will provide students with an alternative avenue to communicate their scholarly research. This redesign will increase the enrollment of the course, attract new majors to the Department of History and the College, and positively impact student learning and success.

Outcomes: Juan has seen a notable improvement in student performance on their first essay (80% to 90%), as well as increased student engagement and participation. He has also adopted open educational resources (OERs) that have reduced the cost of course materials to $0 for the students.

Jill Robinson and Meghan Porter
Chemistry

Reforming the first two courses (C103/C117) in the introductory chemistry sequence is essential due to high DFW rates, ~30% overall and 35-55% for minoritized groups. Although evidence-based teaching practices have been utilized, content revision in these critical courses has not occurred in two decades and the current structure leads to inequitable outcomes between demographic groups. An outcome of this work will be a set of learning outcomes, assessment items, assignments, and resources that support student success created using Backward Design principles. Additionally, a set of math modules will be generated to address post-pandemic math deficiencies in our students.

Rex Sprouse
Second Language Studies

This project aims to design a new Critical Approaches/General Education course on multilingualism applying the principles and practices of Team-Based Learning. The course would fill a critical gap in the University’s undergraduate offerings by introducing a course on the sociolinguistics of multilingualism. It would also introduce a new pedagogical approach to courses offered through the Second Language Studies Department, which would subsequently be widely shared with faculty and graduate students. Meta-pedagogically, the course would stress the importance of Teamwork as a Career Competency in addition to Communication, Equity and Inclusion, Applied Problem Solving, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking

Tim Bell
Media School
As the curriculum for the Cinema and Media Studies concentration in the Media School has been revised, MSCH C-241: Watching Film is by necessity becoming an integral gateway course for guiding undergraduates into the concentration’s major. This proposal to incorporate a collaborative undergraduate research component into the course seeks to resolve higher enrolment and the equally pressing need to retain undergraduates in humanities-based film and media studies with the skills-based active learning the class is there to provide.

Dacia Charlesworth
Kelley School of Business
Combining psychological safety (i.e., a willingness to take interpersonal risks due to mutual trust and respect among team members) with mastery learning (i.e., requiring students to achieve a level of mastery in prerequisite knowledge before advancing to subsequent information), this proposal seeks to revise a major course project to enhance students’ teamwork skills in BUS-C204: Business Writing. By creating formative assessments, correctives, and optional enrichment activities that must be completed prior to class, students will be more likely to collaborate and view each other as productive team members. Additionally, in-class activities will serve as first steps in establishing psychological safety.

Dawn Kutza
Kelley School of Business
Historically, nations have measured their development exclusively in terms of economic growth and rising incomes, using GDP as the primary indicator of “success.” However, GDP does not account for the costs of economic activities and instead prioritizes production and consumption, frequently at the expense of nature, people, community, and culture. Iceland, a country ranking at the top of many global peace and happiness indexes, even after suffering a major economic banking crisis in 2008—and who’s Prime Minister recently adopted a 39-factor “well-being” framework to measure societal, environmental, and economic health—provides an excellent case study for students to reflect on their own life values, behaviors, choices, and degree of responsibility held for the life quality of others and the sustainability of the earth we all share.

Freya Thimsen and Kurt Zemlicka
English
This project proposes to refine and enhance two Advocacy and Debate courses that are part of the Communication and Public Advocacy minor in the English Department. These two highly-subscribed courses are already each offered once or twice a year and attract students from across the university’s various schools. Students from O’Neill, Luddy, Kelley, and other schools love the structured classroom debates but they struggle with actively engaging some of the complex, critical readings rooted in humanistic inquiry. The two courses will be revised in tandem to increase active learning components, foster better reading practices with social annotation software, increase attention to diversity, eliminate redundancy, enhance their complementarity as a “sequence,” and improve and scaffold assessment.

Megan Solon
Spanish and Portuguese
This project aims to enhance student learning and engagement in First-Year Spanish (HISP-S105) by incorporating regular task-based assessments of students’ communicative abilities. This redesign will give concrete value to students’ in-class communicative work, better aligning the course’s assessment techniques with its stated learning goals. More frequent, lower-stakes evaluation will encourage regular presence/participation in the course while mitigating the pressure of common, higher-stakes approaches to evaluating communication. Additionally, this project will facilitate more widespread implementation of research-driven pedagogical practices and ensure that students in all sections of S105 receive the opportunities for language use in context known to drive language learning.

Christopher Parks and Bartosz Langowski
Mathematics
The main purpose of M25: Precalculus course is to prepare students for the M119: Brief Survey of Calculus 1. The latter is a large class with an annual enrollment of approximately 3000 students and a necessary prerequisite for many degrees. Our project addresses several concerns with the Precalculus course taught in the current form: the disconnect between the material covered in M25 and M119, a high D/F/W rate both in M25 and M119, and a low enrollment rate at M25.This project focuses on revising the curriculum of M25 to make it more compatible with M119 and more appealing to students. It will include possibly replacing the current textbook with a more suitable one and changing the instructional approach from the reliance on traditional lectures to a more diverse set of approaches, including activity–based approach, a flipped classroom model, and other types of blended learning.

Carissa Carman and Fafnir Adamites, Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design

S220 Fibers 1

The overhaul has enabled us to support student excellence through diversity and inclusivity, preparing models for engaging students in original research and creative activities, piloting a range of new pedagogical approaches, supporting creative approaches to interdisciplinary thinking and connecting global/primary source resources to support historical contexts and object based learning. The results have included a box folder with artist images, readings, technical instructional guides, rubrics, course assessment tools, as well as newly resourced support references, acquisition of hands on learning samples, and updated technical guides.

Cordula Grewe, Department of Art History

ARTH-A 490: The Art Historian as Sherlock Holmes: Objects  and Materiality in the Digital Age

Using the Eskenazi Museum as a laboratory, the course will lead students from a concrete investigation of material culture and acquisition of scientific knowledge about artifacts’ technical examination to an in-depth understanding of the fundamental questions posed (and methods applied) to objects by a variety of disciplines. Centered on an independent research project, the class aims to hone visual and digital literacy together with the rhetorical and editorial skills so as to equip students with the skills to think critically and logically, communicate clearly, and act creatively. A key objective is a greater engagement of majors from all fields and across campus with IU’s cultural resources. 

Virginia Hojas Carbonell, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Online and Face-to-Face Intermediate Spanish I & II, HISP-S200 & S250

With this project, I will be working on developing summer online versions of our intermediate Spanish courses and on re-designing our face-to-face versions to be delivered as flipped courses. Currently, even though we try to follow a communicative teaching method, our classes are delivered using a traditional method, with mechanical practice and drills, which leaves little to no room for communicative activities, hindering our students’ success at achieving the goal of developing functional competency in the language. This project includes a re-design of our face-to-face courses and online versions to encourage self-regulation and free time in class meetings for real-life communication.

Martha McLeish and Mary Embry, Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design

Developing a Hybrid Learning Structure for SOAD-A100 Pathways: Introduction to Art, Design and Merchandising

SOAD-A 100 Pathways: Introduction to Art, Design and Merchandising explores the disciplinary areas within the Eskenazi School, and provides a common experience that helps students recognize the mutually reinforcing values of these areas. The teaching and learning environment presented by the large lecture format has not been conducive for the original learning objectives. Our redesign  involves the blending of an on-line component with small class sections of 20 students each. Key actions that we have used to modify SOAD-A 100 include recording faculty interviews and enlisting faculty to contribute to the development of content modules.

Meghan Porter, Department of Chemistry

N331: Intermediate Inorganic Chemistry
N337: Intermediate Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory

With the separation of N330 into distinct lecture and lab components, these courses were redesigned, with an emphasis on revising their assessment methods. New assessments include "cumulative challenges" that call for application of key course concepts, concept maps, pre-lab quick checks, and a specifications grading system. N337's redesign also moves students from writing traditional research reports to a combination of research briefs, journal articles, and scientific talks.

Deborah Snaddon and Kimberly Arnold, Department of Chemistry

Chemistry X371: Internship in Chemical Instruction

Chemistry X371 is a course where undergraduate students can serve as teaching interns in undergraduate chemistry courses. Large enrollment classes that utilize teaching interns to enhance learning reach approximately 2000 undergraduate students each fall semester and 1600 students each spring. These courses often have significant DFW rates, which we aim to help reduce. We have developed Chemistry X371 beyond the former focus of supporting instructors by: (1)
creating structured opportunities for undergraduate teaching interns to apply teaching and learning strategies, and (2) emphasizing skill development through use of a comprehensive online collection of literature-based teaching and learning activities.

Vivian Winston, Kelley School of Business

Business A100, Basics of Accounting 

This project involvessetting up my Business A100 class (a rigorous 8-week course with a high withdraw rate), to utilize a hybrid format. The new design will provide students with multiple opportunities to engage with video content outside of class, and then engage with the instructor and their classmates for practice and review of any places where they were stuck.

Anita Morgan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Accounting, Kelley School of Business

Hybrid BUS-A310 Course Design

During the summer of 2019, I redesigned the BUS-A310 (Intermediate Accounting) course for hybrid delivery. In the past few years, building capacity and other issues have made the scheduling of the course a bit challenging; therefore, we decided to offer the course using a hybrid model to alleviate some of the pressures. The hybrid design of the course includes online lessons, learning check problems, and class activities. Additionally, I redesigned the course assessments to more effectively assess the course outcomes, connecting assessment tasks to course outcomes via Canvas’ Learning Mastery gradebook in Canvas, which allows students to track their mastery of course outcomes.

Olga Kalentzidou, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Geography

Infusing Food Systems Teaching with Active Learning Pedagogies in Edible Education (GEOG-G 218)

The GEOG-G 218 Edible Education course introduces students to the complexities and interconnections of the food system through multiple theoretical and methodological lenses. The redesign of the course will more effectively align it with the Department of Geography’s mission and the Food and Agriculture concentration’s learning outcomes. The new format will: (a) designate Edible Education as the introductory course to critical food studies; (b) foster the incorporation of community engaged learning; (c) encourage the use of innovative classrooms to better support student learning; and (d) focus on the analysis of political, economic, and cultural processes inherent in modern food systems thus aligning learning outcomes with the College’s Breadth of Inquiry Social and Historical (CASE) coursework.

Casey Schwab, Associate Professor, Department of Accounting; Bridget Stomberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Accounting; Katie Metz, Senior Lecturer, Department of Accounting

Using Blended Learning to Facilitate Content Evolution in Taxes and Decision Making

In this project, we propose a revision of BUS-A 329 with a dual focus: (1) developing an innovative hybrid learning approach to highly-subscribed undergraduate students, and (2) emphasizing skill development rather than knowledge transfer. This course revision will support the Indiana University Bloomington Strategic Plan by engaging students and promoting strong academics. The revised format will engage students through practical exercises and timely feedback, provide opportunities for instructors to cover more advanced topics, and emphasize ways for students to use tax and decision-making principles beyond the course. We elaborate on each focus of this proposal below and conclude with more specific details around project implementation and improvement.

Ann-Sophie Barwich, Visiting Assistant Professor Cognitive Science Program;
Jutta Schickore, Professor, Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine

HUBI-B200 The Intricate Human: Sense Perception

The HUBI core courses are interdisciplinary courses, combining scientific and humanist perspectives. They emphasize knowledge of human biological processes, developing scientific literacy and implementing the scientific method, and synthesizing the study of the human organism, human behavior, and social and environmental contexts. These aims are closely aligned with the main objectives of the IUB strategic plan. The topic of perception is uniquely suitable for bringing together approaches and perspectives from the sciences and humanities, while at the same time introducing students to cutting-edge research in neuroscience. The topic is intrinsically interdisciplinary, perception research is methodologically challenging, and it is, of course, a fundamental to all life.

Elaine Hernandez, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology

Community Engaged Learning Course Development – SOC-S365, Health and Society—Sociology for Health Professionals

Health care providers play an important role in our society, but their interactions with patients are only one piece of the broader structure that determines the health of their patients. Sociology provides the tools to understand the structural factors enabling or impeding their patient’s success. The course introduces students to the field of sociology by providing a broad overview of the discipline, with a focus on the sociology of health and illness. This objective will provide them with the tools to connect their everyday experiences with health, illness, and health care to larger social phenomena. This course design project has two main components: 1) Develop an upper-level course (SOC-S 365 Health and Society) that enriches undergraduates understanding of the sociology of health and illness through community engaged learning; and 2) Develop a reciprocal relationship with the Bloomington community that benefits the community-based organization (CBO) and lays the foundation for future community engaged courses.

Jared Allsop, Lecturer, Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism Studies

Redesigning and Re-Imagining: Enhancing Student Learning through Innovative Community Engagement in SPH-Y 397 Recreational Therapy Internship and Professional Preparation

The SPH-Y 397 Recreational Therapy internship & Professional Preparation course provides senior recreational therapy (RT) students the tools, knowledge and skills they need to successfully complete a RT internship and prepare for professional life. Through the support of the SIDF grant this course we be redesigned to bring in elements of the flipped classroom to enable more in class time to cultivate and develop the required skills. The SIDF grant will also make it possible to design and implement unique case studies based upon real world situations. This case studies will be developed in coordination with local community partners.

Megan Hansen Connolly, Lecturer, Department of Second Language Studies

Revision of the Academic Literacy for Multilingual Students Course Sequence (SLST‐T101, T111, and T121)

The goal of this project is to revise the curriculum of the Academic Literacy Development for Multilingual Students course sequence to support the diverse academic needs of IUB undergraduate international students. This revised course sequence will more closely align the curriculum with the expectations of faculty. A College‐wide needs analysis was conducted in Fall 2017; the new “read-to-write” SLOs reflect the rhetorical and linguistic skills which the surveyed Gen‐Ed courses required. This curriculum revision will also incorporate service‐learning and intercultural exchange components in each level of the course sequence which require international students to actively participate in campus and community events. 

Alex Lichtenstein, Professor, Department of History

Reacting to the Past: Freedom Summer, 1964

“Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) is a pedagogical approach for teaching students about the past through simulated situational historical games. The goal of this project is to create an RTTP “game” that can serve as a regular part of the College curriculum for the Political and Civic Engagement (PACE) program, History, and perhaps the Intensive Freshman Seminar, which has benefitted from this pedagogy in the past. This particular simulation will focus on the history of “Freedom Summer” in 1964.

Kate Livingston, Lecturer, Department of Gender Studies

Slacking ON: Creating Transformative G225 Learning Communities in Large Lectures with Slack

Offered year-round by the Department of Gender Studies, G225 Gender and Sexuality in Pop Culture is the highest enrolling Common Ground Arts & Humanities GE focusing on issues of gender and sexuality. The course focuses on the role of popular media in shaping cultural understandings of gender, sexuality, race, class, and ability. As a part of the process of studying popular media’s influence, students are asked to consider their own explicit and implicit biases. Many classroom activities designed to help students “unpack” bias are discussion-based. G225 is typically taught in large lectures and thus presents a challenge to the instructor in terms of creating sustained opportunities for students to discuss course content in small groups—in a way that is not limited by enrollment size and classroom space. This multi-tiered course re-design project addresses these issues by integrating Slack, a free workplace messaging technology, to cultivate small group discussion in G225 large lectures.

Jonathan Risner, Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Hazlo tú mismo / Do-It-Yourself: Incorporating Cellphone Cinema Production into Spanish-Language Undergraduate Film Courses

This project will lead to the development of a cellphone cinema production component for Spanish-language undergraduate film courses. With short films of approximately five minutes, students will avail themselves of cellphone movie-making technology and inexpensive editing software to make a movie which will serve as a culminating project at the semester’s end. The film will bridge theories about Latin American and Spanish cinema that we study in the course with the practice of making a film that draws on those theories. Cellphone cinema production seeks to promote (1) advanced languages proficiency; (2) film and media literacy within my home department, and (3) undergraduate creative work.

Adam Ward, Assistant Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Innovative Instructional Technologies & Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sustainability in Environmental Engineering 

This project will improve students’ ability to apply their knowledge to analyze environmental problems using a systems approach, and to design sustainable solutions related to air and water quality by implementing innovative instructional technologies and designing curriculum around case-studies. The project will implement a blended learning format, coupling web-based lectures with in-class case studies. Expected outcomes are increased student-reported interest, engagement, and satisfaction with the course and improved educational outcomes for students relative to a traditionally instructed baseline.

Christopher DeSante, Assistant Professor, Political Science

Politics & Comedy: From Socrates to South Park

This project led to the development of a course on Politics & Comedy, looking at serious political science questions through the lens of popular satire, stand-up comedy, and other forms of humor. This course was developed in order to increase enrollments in the College, as well as with the University’s core values in mind. The goal of the course itself is to unite central questions/concepts in political philosophy with current research in the psychology of humor to facilitate deeper conversations about contemporary issues in American politics. By using comedy in a variety of forms—from the writings of Aristophanes and Socrates, to the parody and satire of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and South Park—the course was developed in such a way as to engage the students in new ways of thinking and engaging political philosophy through the lens of comedy.

Michael Hamburger, Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Natural Disasters, Sustainability, and the Future of Civilization

This course presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the most exciting—and often terrifying—manifestations of life on a dynamic planet. The class will provide both a scientific framework for understanding the processes that produce earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters, as well as their implications for society. We will explore the ways that natural disasters challenge the fundamental resilience of societies, and the ways they are linked with human‐induced environmental change. We will examine fundamental geophysical processes that trigger natural disasters, document their complex arrays of secondary effects, and explore approaches to mitigation of natural disasters. The course will also explore historical, philosophical, religious, and artistic reflection on natural disasters.

Andrew Libby, Lecturer, Human Biology; and Michael Wasserman, Assistant Professor, Anthropology

Human Biology B200: The Intricate Human Linking Planetary and Human Health

In this course, we addressed the science and politics of climate change using an interdisciplinary approach. Scientifically, we examined the basics of climate science, how climate influences organisms and ecosystems, how humans influence the climate, and the ways organisms deal with climate change biologically. We placed additional emphasis on the role of climate change in ecological and evolutionary processes, how human activity interacts with these processes, and the consequences of this interaction on human health and sustainability. Complementing the science, we also looked at the historical and political context in which the science operates. Specifically, we considered the processes of industrialization that are driving climate change, the current rhetoric and consequence of climate change denial, and responses to that denial. Finally, we examined how humans are dealing with climate change through technological advances, public policy agreement, and conservation and the success, or lack thereof, of those efforts.

Paul Logan, Lecturer, and Nina Onesti, Senior Lecturer, Informatics

INFO I101 Lecture Flip

INFO I101 (Introduction to Informatics and Computing) is a large undergraduate course that explores a wide range of current topics within informatics and computer science. Our hope is to spark an interest in undergraduate students who are interested in becoming an informatics major, minor, or are just curious about what informatics actually is. We intend to flip the classroom in order encourage interdisciplinary thinking, combining informatics and technology and their personal interests and goals. These plans are in line with the School of Informatics and Computing’s goal to help students to realize and reach their potential, and to create a collaborative, engaging, and inclusive learning environment for all to thrive in

Kathleen Myers, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese

S412 Spanish America: The Cultural Context in a Service-Learning Environment

This new service-learning culture course will focus on a broad range of Hispanic cultural traditions and arts and how they have been used to formulate and market national and regional identities within a global framework. To help students bridge the gap between their own process of attaining intercultural proficiency and the academic content of the course, I will develop an integral service-learning component in which IU students will reflect on and articulate the intercultural learning strategies they are acquiring by moving outside a traditional classroom setting and hone their newly acquired skills by applying them as teachers of school age children. In addition, we will develop highly interactive cultural materials through new technology that allows for a more direct experience of culture (e.g., virtual tours of museums, linking into a class in another country, etc.) and examining the wide variety of materials on the world-wide-web.

David Smiley, Lecturer, Recreation, Park, and Tourism Studies

Winery and Food Tourism: The Case of Sorrento, Italy

Winery and Food Tourism: The Case of Sorrento, Italy, will be a new offering for the

department and will be the first course looking to add a study abroad component. Currently

students in the Recreation, Parks, & Tourism Studies major that are interested in study abroad

programs related to tourism have to look for offerings conducted by other departments across

campus. Each semester, our major has a number of students who are availing themselves to these programs. The class will look at the way that wineries and food establishments can generate tourism for an area by studying Sorrento. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the efforts that go into making a destination successful from a tourism perspective and the resultant impact on the culture and economic viability of the residents.

Jared Allsop, Lecturer, Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism Studies

Redesign of SPH-Y378-379

This project addresses a problem with SPH-Y 378 and 379, specifically a disconnect between lecture, lab, and service-learning components. I propose to redesign the courses to maximize student engagement with our community partners, while also allowing for the necessary skills development and learning that is essential to student success. In order to accomplish this goal, this project will 1) institute a flipped class approach, and 2) develop a unique laboratory experience that engages students directly in recreational therapy practice in real-world settings with actual clients in a sustainable format. 


Farrah Bashey-Visser, Lecturer, Human Biology; and Krista Maglen, Assistant Professor, History

Human Biology B200: Epidemics

This project will develop an interdisciplinary B200 “Intricate Human” course that utilizes our shared expertise in epidemic diseases to offer students a unique set of skills for the analysis of this perpetual problem in human societies. “Epidemics” is a topic that provides us with an enormous scope for developing important scientific literacy skills by immersing students in all aspects of the inquiry process. At the same time, this scientific inquiry will be combined with social, cultural, and historical reading and analysis of the impact of epidemic diseases. Alongside hands-on activities and projects that emphasize the scientific method, students will be asked to participate in historical and ethical debates which seek to problematize scientific responses to disease.

Laura Brown, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry

Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) in Organic Chemistry

A new Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) in Organic Chemistry will be developed as a way to maximize undergraduate participation in academic research. This project will allow students enrolled in an upper level organic chemistry laboratory course to synthesize a ‘library’ of organic molecules that are structurally related to a known inhibitor of bacterial communication, or ‘quorum sensing.’ The students will then test their new compounds in an assay developed here at IU, and learn what structural features are optimal for desired biological activity

Kalani Craig, Clinical Assistant Professor, History

HIST 301: Digital History

“Digital Encounters with the Past” is a new undergraduate class that puts GIS, text mining and network analysis tools to use in the history classroom, so that students can see the overlap between meaningful academic research experiences and portfolio pieces that go with them after they leave IUB. “Digital Encounters” will ground assessment of the value (and pitfalls) of big-data analysis in history research in an understanding of “technology” in history (quill pens are technology, too!). Students will then use big-data methodology in a digital research project that explores IU’s place in history here and abroad.

Alyce Fly, Associate Professor, Applied Health Science, School of Public Health

Development of Four Learning Modules to be Utilized by a Large Undergraduate General Education Natural and Mathematical Science Course, Human Nutrition, SPH-N231

This project adds online modules to SPH-N231, Human Nutrition, in order to show students a systematic approach for solving the types of problems that they need to solve in the course. The modules focus on topics that are important for student success in the course, and that will also help students (even non-majors) become more scientifically literate citizens. We plan to assess the impact of the modules by comparing several markers of student performance in sections that have access to the modules, with those that do not have access to the modules.

Lessie Jo Frazier, Associate Professor, Gender Studies and American Studies

AMST 300: Image of America in the World

This project involves the development of hybrid and online versions of AMST 300: Image of America in the World. As an active learning course, it will be “flipped” in a backwards course design where assessments require students to skillfully do things with information. For example, the first assignment requires students to build a class primary-source archive of recent foreign press reporting on the U.S. and then to select information to support a cohesive point. As activities are implemented, I will study their implementation in these different course modalities, with comparisons being based on factors such as quality of work, time on task, and students’ ability to self-assess their own learning process. 

Lauren Reiter, Visiting Assistant Professor, Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design

R100 Introduction to Retail Design and Merchandising

This project hopes to enhance the introduction of R100 within the new School of Art and Design (SOAD). As our department looks towards the future and collaboration with other departments in a more fluid landscape, this course hopes to present fashion design and retail merchandising as a more cohesive element to SOAD. This course encourages students to combine varying elements from SOAD into their final degree, leading to a possibly more directed and specific career path through identifying new strategies looking at merchandising and fashion design from a more holistic perspective.

Adam Ward, Assistant Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Innovative Instructional Technologies to Promote Interdisciplinary Thinking in Water Quality Modeling

The goal of this project is to use innovative instructional technologies to improve student understanding of water sustainability, in both domestic and international contexts. Through web-based supplemental instruction and development of case-studies, students in Surface Water Quality Modeling will address the grand challenge of sustainable management of water resources. The flipped classroom model will include web-based scaffolding problems and traditional lecture, freeing up classroom time for addressing more complex problems, and discussion of related economic, political, and policy issues related to water quality management. The technological innovations and revised delivery are expected to increase in student-reported interest, engagement, and satisfaction with the course and improved educational outcomes for students.

 John Arthos, Associate Professor, Communications and Culture

Integrated Interactive Video Annotation Homework Units

COLL P155, Public Oral Communication, is a packed course experience, since it serves both as a training in public speaking, an introduction to argumentation theory, and a training in critical listening and public communication ethics. My challenge is to integrate the weekly lecture, the testing, the textbook readings (which are quite challenging) and the performance labs into a seamless course experience for students. One of the learning problems we’ve identified is that students are not sufficiently connecting the theory presented in the lecture and textbook readings with the performance activities in the performance labs – some of them are having trouble seeing the relation between theory and practice. In order to address these challenges, I will create a series of interactive video tutorials that lead students through the key ideas in the course, that connect the theory to their own performance work, and that will be assigned as homework as part of the students’ regular weekly course preparation.

Christopher DeSante, Assistant Professor, Political Science

Why Should We Care about Political Science?

This proposal redefines Political Science Y101, reactivating the course to emphasize the logic of scientific inquiry with specific applications to the study of politics. As you may know, many undergraduate students begin to take courses in political science because they are interested in current events, both foreign and domestic. I would guess that few students begin a major in political science understanding that it is a scientific endeavor, producing knowledge by utilizing some of the same methods as found in the natural sciences. Moreover, there are aspects of the study of politics that most students are never acquainted with that would not only help them better understand politics, but will also enable them to understand interactions in their own lives. After an initial set of lectures on the philosophy of science, I plan to “flip” this course, replacing the lectures with a series of in-class activities to illustrate the main course concepts: designing a research project, strategic behavior, voting and voting rules (institutionalism), meta-cognition and randomized experiments in political science. Ideally, upon completing this course the students should have a set of tangible skills related to political science and be more inclined to pursue empirical research.

Ashley Hasty, Lecturer, Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design

AMID F340: History of Fashion

Since students would be better designers, writers, and marketers with a contextualized understanding of fashion within its historical framework, this project will enable me to: design the course as a flipped course so that students can devote time to applying fashion history concepts to real-world scenarios that relate to their interests and career goals; create final assignment rubrics; and design a pre/post assessment to measure students’ achievement of course goals.

Kirk Ludwig, Professor; and Adam Leite, Associate Professor, Philosophy

Philosophical Writing and Methods—A Hands-on Approach

The purpose of the project is to develop a new 300-level course on philosophical methods and writing primarily for philosophy majors and minors to be integrated into the major requirements as one of two foundational skills courses for the philosophy major (the other being logic). This course supports the IUB Strategic Plan’s goal of engaging students in original research or creative activities by providing students skills necessary for original and creative research in philosophy.

Michelle Moyd, Associate Professor, History 

Revision of HIST W203: World War I: Global War

This project will focus on three specific tasks related to a revision of HIST-W203, “World War I: Global War.” First, I will design new course assignments to better engage students as active researchers and thinkers, focusing on developing two specific skills that relate to disciplinary goals. Second, in consultation with CITL and departmental experts in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, I will develop a clear assessment framework in order to better judge what students have learned, and to provide students with tools for interpreting my expectations for their learning and performance. Finally, I will build some of IU’s singular archival resources into the new assignments in a purposeful way to give students a chance to experience history as a discipline, to practice disciplinary skills that support broader problem-solving skills, and to help demystify for students the vast historical resources available at IU and beyond.

Kelley Sax, Senior Lecturer, French and Italian

Revision of FRIT F200/F250

F200 and F250, both multi-section general education courses, are regularly offered every semester and summer at IUB, with a combined annual enrollment of approximately 754 students. The curriculum for this level is particularly challenging in that the courses serve a dual function: they are both the “end of the line” for students just seeking to fulfill the language requirement, and they are the gateway courses to the third and fourth year curriculum for French minors and majors. The challenge is to set learning goals high enough so that minors and majors are prepared to tackle discussing and writing critically about French literature, culture, civilization, and linguistics in French when transitioning to our 300‐level classes, while creating an equally valuable course of study for students who stop after the second year. This project will overhaul course content with the aim of better articulation with upper division courses while still being mindful of needs and interests of “language requirement fulfillers.”