Hrabowski Innovation Fund Grant Recipients

Interim and Final Reporting Requirements

Hrabowski Innovation Fund award recipients are required to submit interim (first year) and final reports of project outcomes, products, participants and impacts. Please consult the Expectations of HIF Awardees page for the content and formatting of your report.

Spring 2024 Awardees

  • The Effects of Social and Institutional Engagement on First-Generation Students’ Sense of Belongingness and Academic Success (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Mirela Cengher (Psychology) will investigate whether including supplemental institutional engagement (IE) activities will improve first-generation students’ degree persistence, GPA, sense of belonging, and IE. Research shows that first-generation students, who represent 30% of the UMBC student body, are at a greater risk for academic failure from the start of their undergraduate training. UMBC provides several resources to promote first-generation student IE, though they may not engage students as fully as other activities documented to increase success and sense of belonging. The team will explore three questions: 1) whether a UNIV 101 freshman seminar promotes persistence, GPA, belonging, and IE among first-generation college students in their first year, 2) whether the addition of several IE activities (e.g., mentoring, study groups) confers additional advantages, and 3) what first-generation students who do and do not continue into a second academic year report as the greatest challenges to and supports for their retention. The team hopes the results will guide further development of UMBC policy and programming to better support first-generation students.
  • Balancing Innovation and Ethics: Incorporating LLMs into First-Year Writing Instruction (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Tanya Olson (English) will introduce Writing and Rhetoric Division (WARD) instructors and students to foundational knowledge about generative AI and large language models (LLMs), develop assignments and policies for integrating LLMs into first-year composition (ENGL 100), and promote AI literacy among WARD faculty and UMBC students. Three WARD faculty members will learn about LLMs, create LLM-integrated assignments, draft AI/LLM policy statements, and design AI literacy assignments. They will then conduct workshops to train other ENGL 100 instructors, providing them with a common knowledge base and resources for experimenting with LLMs in their courses. To assess the efficacy of the assignments and policies and inform future improvements, the team will analyze student work and instructor feedback, and compare the performance and outcomes of course sections that adopt the LLM-integrated assignments and AI literacy components with those that do not.
  • Lost in Translation: A Computer Science Transfer Data Exploration (Seed Grant) — An interdisciplinary team led by Krista Wallace (CoEIT Undergraduate Student Services) will explore the challenges and opportunities that transfer students face in the Computer Science (CMSC) major. Transfer students make up approximately one-third of the student population at UMBC and bring a wealth of experience and enthusiasm. In recent years, the college has seen great progress in the retention and graduation rates of transfer students, though there is much room for improvement. Within the CMSC major, the largest at UMBC, there is a narrative that many transfer students struggle in CMSC 300-level courses, particularly CMSC 341, and thus do not persist in the major. The team will explore student success data, survey undergraduate students, hold focus groups, and work with faculty to help identify areas where CMSC transfer students struggle as well as opportunities to help them be successful. This project will explore existing datasets and related data analysis on the persistence, retention, and barriers to success of computer science transfer students. They hope to propose interventions that enable the students entering UMBC with varying computational backgrounds to succeed in their intended major and increase their graduation rates.

Fall 2023 Awardees

  • Data-Driven Student-Centered Health Communication and Promotion: Interdisciplinary Collaborative Problem-Solving and Peer-Learning for a Thriving Campus (Implementation and Research Grant) — An interdisciplinary team led by Karen Chen (Information Systems) will explore a project-based learning and collaborative teaching approach that will enhance students’ problem-solving skills and facilitate peer-learning experiences across two disciplines, Data Science and Public Health. Students will be empowered to identify problems and craft theory-grounded and data-driven solutions to improve UMBC students’ health and well-being in existing undergraduate courses in each of these disciplines. The team will assess students’ mastery of knowledge and skills, and conduct surveys and focus groups. Given the interdisciplinary and complex nature of many contemporary real-world challenges, like climate change or public health, a significant aim of this project is to demonstrate that collaborative teaching and learning across disciplines is possible, despite some administrative barriers.
  • Increasing Visual Literacy with Collaborative Foraging, Annotation, Curation, and Critique (Implementation and Research Grant) — Rebecca Williams (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) aims to address the perceptual challenges of information overload and misinformation by increasing students’ Visual Information Literacy (VIL) and critical evaluation skills, as well as surfacing and dispelling common misconceptions about visual technical information. To harvest the benefits of prior research on misconceptions in information visualization pedagogy, the PI will develop and pilot an open-source visual curation + annotation platform that enables students to collaboratively participate in the process of searching for and curating found examples of misleading charts and graphs, collaborative annotation + critique of examples into concept maps, and discovery of new examples + patterns. The VIL will be assessed by examining patterns in student annotations and groupings, pre-/post-course assessment, and instructor feedback. After the pilot course, the site will be released to other departments.
  • Ethical Applications of Generative AI to Teaching and Assessment in Science and Humanities Coursework; A Guide for Educators (Seed Grant) — An interdisciplinary team led by Muhammad Ali Yousuf (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) will develop learning material for use in science and humanities classrooms geared towards Generative AI responses to help teachers and students embrace Generative AI as a tool of, rather than a replacement for, learning. Generative AI is here to stay, yet teachers are unprepared for its proper use and students are jumping in without understanding its benefits and perils. Teachers and students have long relied on well-received tools such as Grammarly and intelligent Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). This project aims to teach students to properly and ethically use generative AI tools to ‘improve’ their writing, rather than relying on the tools to do the writing itself. The team will assess the methods to determine if students are better prepared to handle problems over a period of time.

Spring 2023 Awardees

  • Autism Peer Mentorship Program (AUTISM PEERS) (Adaptation Grant) — A team led by Michael Canale (Student Disability Services) will create a sustainable peer mentoring program for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by recruiting neurotypical mentors to work with ASD students on social learning. Many ASD students lack the social and interpersonal communication skills to participate in campus events and activities fully. Social learning theory, attributed to Albert Bandura, suggests that humans can learn through direct experiences and modeling and imitating behavior. In line with Bandura’s theory, intervention strategies targeting reciprocal interactions with peers to improve atypical or challenging behaviors have shown successful outcomes for prosocial behavior change. These peer-mediated intervention strategies are most commonly based on social learning theory and focus on the direct experience of observation, modeling, and imitation to foster new learning. Students in the program will be interviewed to establish goals and will meet with their mentors weekly to address the established social learning objective. Upon completion of the semester, participants and peer mentors will evaluate the program.
  • Boning Up on Forensic Anthropology: Enhancing Student Learning and DEI Competencies in ANTH 322 (Adaptation Grant) — A team led by Sarah Chard (Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health) will draw on existing SoTL literature to redesign ANTH 322: Forensic Anthropology as an active learning course involving hands-on exercises with skeleton models to support UMBC’s social justice vision. By handling and drawing bones of the human body, and labeling their features, students will gain deeper insights to and greater retention of human osteology, principles of human variation, and pathology, the cornerstones of forensic anthropology. In addition, this redesign will allow students to explore questions of justice and bias that accompany work with human remains. The team will assess the impact of this project by comparing assessment scores to those of prior classes, pre-and post-tests within the course, and obtaining students’ qualitative assessment of the learning process.
  • Assessing Sense of Belonging and Dialogue Skills in a FYS Course (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — A team led by Jasmine Lee and Ciara Christian (Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion & Belonging) will utilize data collected from a first-year seminar course that employs dialogue pedagogy to learn which practices contribute to first-year and transfer students’ sense of belonging in the classroom. They will then identify best practices that instructors might use to intentionally cultivate classroom spaces where students experience a sense of belonging and develop a beginning understanding of how instructors can use classroom spaces to build capacity for dialoguing across differences, especially within the context of broad diversity. As a Minority Serving Institution, UMBC’s students bring rich experiences from all corners of the globe. While the benefits of diversity are evident, students are not always well-equipped to engage meaningfully across differences. Additionally, stakeholders across campus have anecdotally noted several casualties of COVID in relationships, the ability to practice empathy, and the inclination to dialogue across differences of identity, worldview, and lived experience. These casualties contribute to a lack of connection, making it imperative for UMBC to explore the ways in which students find, create, and experience a sense of belonging on campus.
  • Development of an Inquiry-Based Bonus Module with Short Video to Enhance Conceptual Learning in Undergraduate Heat Transfer Course (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Liang Zhu (Mechanical Engineering) will develop and implement bonus modules to approximately 120 students per year in a heat transfer course in hopes of improving students’ retention and graduation rates and creating a strategy that can be adopted by other engineering courses. Mastery of conceptual information in mechanical engineering requires time commitment, and unfortunately, most students do not spend enough time on course content due to heavy course load or family obligations. Based on the team’s experience of assigning bonus problems, they hypothesize that integrating a three minute focused video in an inquiry-based bonus module would effectively engage students in the delivery of these engineering concepts. The modules will consist of a Google form that will obtain students’ original predictions, instruct students to watch a developed video with an explanation to the problem to provide rapid feedback for students to revisit their original prediction, and then engage the students in reflective writing. The team will evaluate effectiveness of the modules based on a survey of conceptual questions of heat transfer given at the beginning and end of the semester.
  • LOTUS Mentoring Program: Leading Others to Thriving and Universal Success (Seed Grant) — Angelina Jenkins (Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion & Belonging) will develop, pilot, and assess an identity-based mentoring program targeted at supporting undergraduate Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi American (APIDA) students at UMBC. UMBC’s current student population boasts broad diversity, but as an MSI, students of color make up about 52% of the student population. More specifically, 19% of UMBC’s student population is made up of APIDA communities. In 2021, Michelle Obama celebrated UMBC as an Asian Serving Institution, yet UMBC has no initiatives or interventions that center these populations. This mentoring program will use Hunt’s Holistic Critical Mentoring model to center culturally specific needs while focusing on academic, social, and cultural development. With a primary goal of building cultural confidence through peer-to-peer connections, APIDA students will increase their sense of belonging, build community connections, and have a deeper understanding of their racial and ethnic identity.
  • Team-Taught Course Development: Experimental Archaeology of the Global Medieval and Renaissance Eras (Seed Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Molly Jones-Lewis (Ancient Studies) and Lindsay Johnson (Music) will build a materials library to support a new course in experimental archaeology, the study of the past using systematic reproduction and use of objects, activities, and arts to answer questions about the past. The course will focus on basic skills of doing (e.g. fiber craft, foraging, dance, music, farming, cooking, writing) used by pre-modern societies in daily life alongside readings of scholarly works using experimental methodology. Students will learn from invited speakers, develop foundational craft skills learning from the instructors and local artisans, reproduce existing experimental projects, and design an experiment of their own to execute. A successful student will be able to articulate a research question about pre-modern history, locate it in existing scholarly discussions, create a physical project that will produce valid data, and present their results clearly and accessibly to others.

Fall 2022 Awardees

  • Multidisciplinary internship experiences at the Imaging Research Center (Adaptation Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Anita Komlodi (Information Systems) will extend the longstanding internship experiences for Visual Arts students with the UMBC Imaging Research Center (IRC) to students from other departments and programs. Initially, the team will recruit students from Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and Information Systems to contribute to interdisciplinary projects. Interns may receive academic credit for the internship as well as a Research Practicum course offered by the UMBC Career Center. The team will augment the existing assessment of the current experience with other internship assessment tools recommended in the literature, such as weekly journaling and oral presentations. The team ultimately plans to extend the internship beyond the proposed departments, disseminate findings, and seek sustained funding and external support.
  • Faculty Studio (Adaptation Grant) — Shawn Lupoli (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) will create a “Faculty Studio” for lecture capture using greenscreen and lightboard technologies. The project will begin with undergraduates in the PI’s Spring 2023 Programming Languages (CMSC 331) course, which uses a flipped classroom approach. All students, whether or not they are participating in the study, will be randomly grouped into teams of three. For the four consecutive experimental weeks, half of the students will get the experimental design using the educational videos created by the faculty studio and the other half will get the control or voiceover. After each week, all students will take a quiz, and group means from the quiz will be used to determine the efficacy of the faculty studio developed educational videos. The PI will also promote the faculty studio for university wide use and data collection.
  • Course Planning with Machine Learning (Seed Grant) — Ergun Simsek (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) will develop machine learning and statistical models to accurately estimate the number of new students entering in the professional programs, and then determine the demand for the necessary sections of the required classes and electives. Course scheduling with an objective function of high classroom (section) fill rates is a challenging task for large and/or rapidly growing programs. One must consider program requirements, current students’ records, and the number of new students joining the program the next semester. Due to their unique structure, professional programs typically learn of the number of new students only a few days before the semester begins, which makes course planning more challenging. The models will be developed and tested using the MPS Data Science program data, which grew from seven to 550 students in five years, and validated with the MPS Health IT program data, which had a similar growth pattern. The PI will share these models with the local community and provide training on how to use them for any master’s program at UMBC.
  • Full STEAM Ahead: Breaking Down Silos to Prepare Students for a Global Society (Seed Grant) — A team led by Jonathan Singer (Education) will develop a course in the Master of Arts in Education program which incorporates experienced teachers working in primary and secondary schools in Maryland in collaboration with pre-service teachers in a STEM-Hub program at the University of Kassel in Germany to develop integrative projects in STEAM to implement in the K-12 classroom. STEAM education is an approach to learning that integrates Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. Today, students must be prepared to enter a global workplace that is increasingly interconnected both internationally and across disciplines. This project establishes the international link through an innovative perspective on how collaboration occurs among disciplines. Working with colleagues in another country will help in-service teachers gain valuable skills and knowledge that they can pass on to their students. The project breaks down silos that exist in education today and embraces that learning is interconnected and that students can excel in all disciplines.
  • Quantum Immersion for Information Systems Undergraduates: An Experiential Learning Approach (Seed Grant) — A team led by Lei Zhang (Information Systems) will incorporate introductory quantum computing modules into existing curricula to bring the knowledge of this growing field to a broader audience and prepare students with cutting-edge technologies for the job market. Quantum computing has the power to change the world of computation and bring about the biggest evolution of computing to date. The field has attracted billions in investments as of 2022, and companies are eager to hire individuals with interdisciplinary expertise. The pilot project will incorporate a one-week quantum module into IS 300 and another one-week quantum module into IS 471, with future extensions to other courses. The team will employ experiential learning best practices, and will assess effectiveness using in-class games, pre- and post-tests, and end-of-class surveys. The team will disseminate their findings and anticipate this project will contribute to the exploration of quantum education across the campus and outside UMBC.

Spring 2022 Awardees

  • Feasibility of Anonymous Grading for Reducing Performance Discrepancies across Student Demographics (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Neha Raikar (Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering) will build an anonymous grading tool for in-class paper exams and quizzes. This tool will allow them to test their hypotheses that anonymous grading can lead to reduction, if not elimination, of implicit bias during grading and improve the fairness perception amongst students, especially underrepresented minority students. The grading methods used for exams and quizzes are central to determining student rank, letter grade, and GPA. Unfortunately, grading by a teaching assistant or an instructor may suffer from implicit bias while grading, which can have a detrimental effect on student morale and performance. The team plans to collect data on anonymous grading in six CBEE and CSEE classes, collect feedback from students, and perform statistical analysis on that data and historical data.
  • Nudging Student Metacognition by Predicting Exam Questions and Answers (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by John Fritz (Division of Information Technology) will expand on an assignment designed to promote student metacognition in students in SCI 100, “Water: An Interdisciplinary Study.” In the prior assignment, students were asked to develop a study guide for their upcoming midterm and final exams by predicting three multiple choice questions and answers expected on the exam. Next, they were assigned to groups where they “voted” on the best student-submitted practice sets using Bloom’s taxonomy as a guide. Finally, students were asked to submit a one-page reflection about their preparation and performance after receiving their actual midterm exam score, and reflect on what they learned about their learning before taking the final exam. The team plans to: 1) streamline the process for students sharing and “voting” on peers’ predicted Q&A sets, 2) seek student feedback by focus group(s) in Fall 2022, 3) assign the exercise again in Spring 2023, 4) compare midterm and final exam scores and final grades to prior terms since the assignment was piloted in 2017, 5) seek faculty partner(s) to pilot in Fall 2023, and 6) publish results.
  • Theory to Practice: Collaborating with Practitioners to Improve Lesson Planning Instruction for Campus to Field Transition (Seed Grant) — A team led by Kimberly Feldman (Education) will collaborate with school-based partners to intentionally strengthen the skills necessary for effective lesson planning to close the gap between the foundations developed in coursework and the day-to-day implementation in the field. The student teaching internship is a formative experience, but at times there is a disconnect between what is learned in courses and what is experienced in the field. Mentor teachers have shared feedback that candidates lack the skills necessary for effective lesson planning and struggle to transfer their experience from course assignments to contextualized day-to-day planning, and lesson planning is often cited as a struggle for interns who are not successful in the field. Mentor teachers and recent alumni will work with faculty/instructors to design lesson planning instruction for the internship orientation and Phase 1 internship. The team will assess the implementation using multiple quantitative and qualitative measures from field assessments already in place.
  • Broadening Participation of Women Undergraduate Transfer Students in COEIT: Designing an Interactive Technology for Affective Skill Development (Seed Grant) — A team led by Andrea Kleinsmith (Information Systems) will design, develop, and evaluate a prototype system for supporting the social and emotional connection of women transfer students in the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) to enhance affective skills and build or solidify a sense of belonging and community. The project aims to design and develop an initial prototype of a mobile app that allows users to send representations of their current electrodermal activity (EDA) experience to a partner, such as a transfer student mentor/mentee. The team will then employ participatory design methods to enable them to better understand transfer students’ specific needs and concerns with an affective support system and develop an initial set of affective EDA representations. Finally, the team will conduct a field test with the proof-of-concept system. The team will analyze the co-design sessions, the post-study surveys, and the post-field test review sessions.

Fall 2021 Awardees

  • Transforming Student Outcomes with High Impact Practices in Music Education (Adaptation Grant) — Brian Kaufman (Music) will bring together adjunct faculty in music education for a curriculum overhaul aimed at transforming student learning outcomes by adapting, integrating, and sequencing practices within three core areas of the curriculum–social justice approaches, the creative process, and integrating technology. Faculty will form a learning community to determine desired program learning outcomes within these areas, examine syllabi across the curriculum, create new syllabi, and reflect on the success of the implemented changes. They will survey students and faculty to determine the impact of the project as well as considerations for future teaching and learning.
  • UMBC Community Read Pilot Project (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — Elaine MacDougall (English) will collaborate with other members of the UMBC and surrounding communities to research the impacts of a newly conceived UMBC Community Read Program with the goal of moving forward with a sustainable design funded by the University. This program is intended to encourage members of the community to research and reflect on various events, programming, collaborations, and marketing that brings students, faculty, staff, alumni, and surrounding community members into a collective conversation surrounding important topics about our shared humanity and experiences. Framing the UMBC Community Read experience around civic learning, social justice, and civic engagement, we can encourage students as scholar-activists to take their experiences with the Community Read into the greater Baltimore community as agents of change. The team is invested in measuring the impact of this program and corresponding activities on student learning and engagement.
  • Powering up the Narrative: Leveraging Digital Storytelling in First Year Programming (Seed Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Mark Berczynski (Engineering Computing and Education Program), Sarah Jewett (Provost’s Office), and Jamie Gillan (Montgomery College English Department) will bring the power and strength of digital storytelling into game design in a video game project in COMP 101Y. This course is designed to build skills in computational thinking and design within a community of underrepresented groups in computing. In COMP 101Y, student groups are asked to reflect on their own experiences as first-year students, and then create a video game that is an authentic and meaningful story about success in a college environment. For this project, the tools and methods of digital storytelling will be applied in ways that enhance the story narrative of the game, as well as deepen the sense of community within the course. If this outcome proves to be successful with one section of the course this spring, the team hopes to scale the work to all six sections by fall.
  • Predictive Modeling for Identifying At-Risk Students in Introductory Computer Science Classes (Seed Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Murat Guner, and later Anupam Joshi, (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) will utilize predictive modeling, a data science approach that uses large datasets to articulate and predict patterns and future events, to support the Computer Science (CMSC) Department’s goals of better supporting students and decreasing class repeat rates in the program. The team aims to develop a set of easy-to-use, adaptable, and sustainable predictive models for the CMSC program to use when making decisions about resource allocation for student support. These models will allow the CMSC program to assign a risk score to each student entering the Computer Science I (CMSC 201) course at the beginning of each semester.
  • Retrieving the Social Sciences: Expanding Students’ Engagement with Science Communication and Public Outreach (Seed Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Christine Mallinson (Language, Literacy, and Culture and Center for Social Science Scholarship) will promote and assess student participation as both creators and listeners of content in the recently launched “Retrieving the Social Sciences” podcast. This podcast by the Center for Social Science Scholarship highlights social science research and teaching at UMBC, with the goal of making research more visible to the public and interdisciplinary audiences through increased science communication. The team will have students create podcast episodes featuring course-based research, showcase exceptional student research via invited interviews, and work with faculty to assign relevant podcast episodes as part of coursework. The team will administer questionnaires to understand these students’ perceptions of learning outcomes from podcast creation and/or listening and ultimately hope to build capacity for the podcast’s long-term sustainability.

Spring 2021 Awardees

  • The Educational Journey of Immigrant Children: An Interdisciplinary Course using Gamification and Role-play (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Kerri Evans (Social Work) will create, implement, and evaluate an interdisciplinary classroom activity (board game), which will be used in a new course (using gamification and role-play) that will help advanced level UMBC students to prepare for their careers in educational settings after graduation. The content of the game and course focuses on the immigrant experience in the US from pre-Kindergarten to college, and ways that UMBC students who will become service providers across multiple disciplines can advocate for inclusion, and welcome and dismantle racism in our schools. The team aims to actively engage UMBC students in the game development process, beta testing, and in the course itself. They will evaluate the project using pre-post tests and focus groups.
  • Preventing Gender-Based Harm at UMBC: Designing and Teaching a Multidisciplinary Course (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Jodi Kelber-Kaye (Honors College) will create a 3-credit first-year seminar (FYS) course centered on educating undergraduate students about gender-based harm at all levels of society, and empowering them to create change. In addition to traditional academic content consisting of lessons rooted in contemporary scholarship on gender-based harm and its impact, students will learn healthy relationship practices and skills through evidence-based prevention models and will exercise the knowledge they glean over the course of the semester through hands-on projects encouraging civic engagement and community activism. Evaluation of this project will entail short- and long-term studies on the impact of this course on campus sexual misconduct outcomes as well as a comparative study on the retention and well-being of students throughout their college career. This project will create a context for further research on classroom-based prevention strategies, allowing UMBC to expand the field of gender-based harm prevention in higher education settings through evaluation and dissemination of this novel educational intervention model.
  • Retrieving Energy: UMBC Green Labs Collaboration (Seed Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Ryan Kmetz (Facilities Management Sustainability Office) will establish a collaboration between the Sustainability Office and the Mechanical Engineering Senior Capstone (ENME 444) course to design, prototype, and deploy motion height sensing sash alarms. Laboratories are the most energy-intensive space on a campus, and laboratory fume hoods are often the predominant contributors to laboratory energy use. A single fume hood typically consumes about the same amount of energy as four US households – and UMBC has over 300 fume hoods! Reducing energy consumption of UMBC’s laboratories is an important milestone towards reaching our carbon neutrality goals. Shutting the sash of fume hoods reduces the volume of exhausted conditioned air; thus, reducing energy. However, it is easy to forget to shut the sash, and research has shown that sensors with auditory reminders to shut the sash can reduce energy use of a fume hood significantly. This project-based learning experience will immerse students in the complex world of sustainability challenges and expose them to real-world applications for sustainable solutions. Efficacy will be determined by the energy reduction and the overall applicability and scalability of the project.
  • Assessing and Reversing Students’ Unpreparedness in Upper Level Biology Courses (Seed Grant) — Michelle Starz-Gaiano and Fernando Vonhoff (Biological Sciences) will collect data about why students do not prepare thoroughly before coming to class. The team will collect data to confirm their hypothesis that students do not have effective strategies for reading primary literature papers and thus find the content overwhelming, which decreases their motivation to carefully read the assigned learning materials. If this hypothesis proves to be correct, they will help students develop efficient strategies to bridge the gap between learning from textbooks and learning from primary, data-based literature by testing the method of annotating papers following strategies described by the AAAS Science In The Classroom website. By presenting the scientific content in a more digestible manner, the team will help students develop efficient strategies to read and understand scientific papers over time. The team will collect preliminary data on the efficacy of this method from the student’s perspective, from analysis on student performance using historical data from 2018-2020, and between course modules with and without annotated papers. The team will also collect preliminary data examining whether the application of this method can be used to stimulate students to be engaged in more complex assignments, which may lead to a deeper understanding of the class material and prepare them for future advanced challenges.

Fall 2020 Awardees

  • Identifying an Interdisciplinary Path to Social Responsibility Education across the COEIT Curriculum (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Helena Mentis (Engineering and Information Technology) will gather insights to develop a more comprehensive framework for incorporating Socially Responsible Thinking (SRT) throughout the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) curriculum. Universities are being called upon to incorporate greater attention to social responsibility, specifically for students expected to participate in technology development and innovation. At UMBC, several recent initiatives have aimed to incorporate SRT into engineering and computing education, yet they have been fairly disconnected from each other and from the social sciences. The team will collect and analyze surveys and interviews from students, faculty, and employers and ultimately form a Faculty Learning Community, host a campus-wide speakers event, and produce a final report for stakeholders. Multiple metrics will be used to assess the project’s impact vis-a-vis two main aims: to identify pathways to integrate SRT concepts into the engineering/computing curriculum, and to increase cross-college collaboration around SRT. Results from the project will speak to opportunities to improve academic persistence, engagement, and workforce participation for COEIT students, and greater interfacing across COEIT and the social sciences/CAHSS.
  • Digitizing the Funny Papers: A Student-Led Digital Humanities Collaboration with UMBC Special Collections (Adaptation Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Lindsay DiCuirci, Beth Saunders, and Susan Graham (English and Special Collections Library) will collaborate on an advanced undergraduate English seminar focused on digitizing UMBC’s Merkle Collection of English Graphic Satire and creating a public digital exhibition. In this semester-long, project-based course, students will learn theories and methods in the digital preservation of rare books and manuscripts; metadata creation and bibliographic description; exhibition writing and design; principles of curation; public outreach and promotion; and historical research and cultural critique. Students will not only build the exhibition, but will also develop pedagogical tools, guides, and best practices for digital exhibition building and will document their process through reflective writing and self-assessments. This course will serve as an innovative model for future student-led digital humanities initiatives that make use of the unique but largely undigitized materials held in Special Collections at UMBC.
  • Access to Online and In-Person Interventions: Comparing the Impact on Student Success of Providing SI PASS in all MATH 151 Lectures (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Delana Gregg (Academic Success Center) will extend supplemental instruction (SI PASS) support for MATH 151, while collecting and analyzing data on its effects on student success during online and in-person learning. SI PASS (peer-led study sessions), a nationally recognized and widely-researched student success intervention, targets historically difficult courses with high D/F/W rates. UMBC regularly offers SI PASS support for a number of such courses, typically in STEM. UMBC-based assessment and national research indicate that participation in SI PASS correlates with many positive student outcomes, including higher grades, higher retention, and student-reported gains in course learning and study skills. MATH 151 is a key gateway course for many majors and has high DFW rates (>25%). There are multiple large lecture sections for this course every semester, but only two SI PASS leaders. The team will extend the program so that there is one SI PASS leader for each lecture section, allowing for research on the effectiveness of this learning intervention. The team will also analyze the effects on SI PASS participation and student success of offering online course instruction and online SI PASS compared to in-person instruction and in-person SI PASS and continuing to offer online SI PASS after UMBC returns to in-person instruction compared to in-person SI PASS.
  • Keys to Inclusion: an initiative to imagine a more inclusive piano canon (Seed Grant) — Daniel Pesca (Music) will co-lead a multi-institutional effort to bring music departments and piano studios from five institutions around the country together to research, perform, record, and teach the piano music of Black American composers. The program includes a range of online activities, including lectures by eminent scholars of the repertoire, a series of masterclass exchanges between institutions, and a final recording project. The lectures address many aspects of music-making, from considerations of social context to pedagogy, from historical inquiry to the creation of brand new work. Students will be empowered to grow as musicians as they enjoy the benefits of working with professionals from across the country, learning the process of making a high-level recording, and discovering unfamiliar repertoire. The fruits of this year-long effort will be shared via an online database. After the pilot year, the team intends to expand their reach by encouraging other institutions to join the initiative as a small but vital part of a larger conversation in classical music institutions of all sorts about inequities in representation.

Spring 2020 Awardees

  • Enhancing Student Engagement in Internationalization at Home: Towards Inclusiveness and Intercultural Dialogue (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Irina Golubeva (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication) developed the intercultural communication skills of undergraduate and graduate students in order to foster intercultural dialogues on campus and to enhance their preparedness for working in a culturally diverse world. The team conducted a campus-wide needs analysis survey with a focus on campus climate; designed and developed an innovative online intercultural training curriculum; piloted the training; and measured the results with the Intercultural Development Inventory assessment tool. This initiative supported UMBC’s institutional strategic plan of internationalization, with a special focus on internationalization at home. This project offered an intercultural learning opportunity to all students regardless of whether they set foot outside of the United States, and was designed to specifically address the intercultural communication needs of our diverse campus community in alignment with other existing initiatives that celebrate cultural diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice.
  • Synchronous IRL/DL Technologies for Innovative Teaching (Adaptation Grant) — A team led by Diane Alonso, Eileen O’Brien, and Anne Brodsky (Psychology) investigated innovative options to reach all students by connecting campuses via technology to create a dynamic hands-on experience at both campuses. The Psychology department has limited resources, two campuses, and multiple external settings (e.g. Kennedy Krieger Institute) to cover, and a large number of students required to take their courses. The team planned to offer PSYC 335 in Summer 2020 as a cross-campus, two section course at Shady Grove and Main campus with WebEx providing the technological link for this class taught by a faculty member and a TA using active learning. They aimed to create a remote shared classroom and meeting room for use in providing better access and technological support than the traditional lecture classrooms that could also be used for remote meetings, interviews, community collaboration, and to help better incorporate Shady Grove and Kennedy Krieger faculty.
  • The Accelerated Math 106 Program (Adaptation Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by William LaCourse and Beatrice Lauman (College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences) provided supplemental support for Math 106 Algebra and Elementary Functions students through intensive instruction and practice in key algebra concepts and topics. The Accelerated Math 106 Program (AMP) provided students in Math 106 who score below a 40% on a pre-assessment with an additional research-based opportunity to learn the content of Math 106 through a six-week supplemental session. The supplemental session utilized undergraduate learning assistants to support problem solving activities and group work and to provide peer mentoring. AMP was based on the hypotheses that effectively learning algebra involves identifying misconceptions, learning the correct conceptual underpinnings, and doing extensive problem solving followed by reflection. The effects of the program were assessed by comparing participants’ and non-participants’ content knowledge and attitudes toward mathematics learning. Participants’ beliefs about the impact of the LA’s were examined as well.
  • Metacognitive Media Literacy: Modules Supporting Self-Regulated Learners in MCS 101 (Adaptation Grant) — A team led by Donald Snyder (Media and Communication Studies) created a series of modules for the introductory MCS 101: Media Literacy course modeled after those created in Jean A. Cardinale and Bethany C. Johnson’s “Metacognition Modules: A Scaffolded Series of Online Assignments Designed to Improve Students’ Study Skills.” The team created content and assignments for the modules focused on providing students with resources to increase their ability to self-regulate and develop metacognitive skills. They anticipated that this intervention would produce a measurable impact on students’ ability to work independently, to critically reflect on their own learning processes, and to articulate these gains in written and oral form.
  • Evaluation and Enhancement of a Learning Unit on Quantum Algorithms (Seed Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Alan Sherman (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) assessed and enhanced materials for a two-week learning unit for quantum algorithms created by Sherman which was field tested in CMSC 641 algorithms. This unit introduced the new transformative paradigm of quantum algorithms, which offers tremendous potential for solving important complex problems. This project made this learning unit, including its six videos and other materials, freely available after they were revised and enhanced based on reviews by three experts.

Fall 2019 Awardees

  • Learning Teaching as an Interpretive Process in Urban Schools (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Kindel Nash (Education) conducted a qualitative investigation of the Learning Teaching as an Interpretive Process (LTIP) framework’s impact on the learning outcomes of teacher candidates who are Sherman Program scholars. This framework is designed to prepare teachers to adequately support the learning of students from culturally and linguistically diverse groups who often attend urban schools. The proposed project impacted Sherman Program scholars’ abilities to navigate the complexities of teaching during their education programs and as they enter the teaching profession.
  • Climate Change and Society: Global Change in the Context of Maryland (Seed Grant) — A team led by Dawn Biehler and Maggie Holland (Geography and Environmental Systems) instituted a course, Climate Change and Society, accessible to all UMBC students to develop students’ knowledge of the causes, effects, inequities, and responses of climate change, and heighten their confidence in communicating with others about it. The team began by teaching an incubator course focused on climate change issues in Maryland which covered content, featured expert guest speakers, and consisted of team research to produce components of a Maryland Atlas of Climate Change. The team analyzed the results of the assessment, updated course materials, and modified and developed new course modules for a larger class at a lower level for a future semester.

Spring 2019 Awardees

  • Ethical considerations in data science curricula (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Vandana Janeja (Information Systems) developed a pedagogical module to infuse ethics into data science and related curricula. The team worked with faculty partners across campus to design lectures (in person and online) to discuss ethical considerations in data science, particularly focused on decision making throughout the data life cycle. The modules were evaluated by pre- and post-surveys, including scenarios of decision making during the development of a data science project. Colleagues from other academic units involved in ethical reasoning and data science education were invited to participate throughout the round-tables and utilize the module for their own classes. This project provided leadership opportunities to engage with partners across the country in future opportunities.
  • Understanding, Assessing and Improving Student Teamwork (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Simon Stacey (Honors College) aimed to understand, assess and improve student teamwork skills and behaviors. The team focused primarily on the textual interactions of students collaborating through online platforms and also transcribed a limited set of face-to-face interactions in the later stages of the project. The interactions were analyzed by 1) generating statistical data focusing on the form of the interactions and 2) exploring the content of the interactions by identifying the characteristics and behaviors of successful interactions using qualitative content analysis and machine learning techniques. The ultimate goal was to use the qualitatively coded interactions to train a neural network to perform qualitative coding. The team provided information to instructors, teams, and team members in real time to allow for changes in behavior, adaptations, support and interventions.
  • Text + Code = Better Machine Learning Education (Seed Grant) — Tim Oates (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) wrote the first several chapters of a Machine Learning textbook in a format that allows free intermingling of code, data, interactive visualizations, and professional quality typesetting. The tools used to write and represent the book are based on the default technology stack for modern machine learning, which enables active experimentation with live examples. Students can read about a concept or algorithm and then text their understanding interactively inside the textbook. He used surveys to evaluate the utility of the proposed format by measuring differences in engagement and understanding between the proposed format and a standard print textbook.
  • The Influence of the “Seeing White” Podcast Course on Racial Knowledge, Attitudes, and Skills among Undergraduate Students (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — A team led by M. Nicole Belfiore (Social Work) evaluated the effect of a semester long course based on the “Seeing White” podcast on undergraduate students’ racial attitudes, knowledge, and skills. The course required listening to podcast episodes, attending integrative seminars, reflective journaling, and completing a self-evaluation analysis paper. The team was interested in the innovative use of a podcast for content delivery, as well as the effect on student growth and commitment to social justice around race issues. The team ultimately developed coursework on race, discrimination, and oppression issues for undergraduate students guided by this study for integration into the curriculum.
  • Effectiveness of Disciplinary-Decoupled Mathematical Reasoning (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — A team led by Kathleen Hoffman (Mathematics and Statistics) decoupled the foundational proof-writing skills from the disciplinary course of real analysis, Math 301, and developed a new course in Mathematical Reasoning that focuses on fundamental skill development in the area of proofs in order to increase success in Math 301 and upper level mathematics courses. Much of the material taught in the lower level mathematics courses is “calculational” in nature and does not prepare students for the theorem-proof based classes at the upper level. As a result, in the “bridge” class to the upper level courses, Math 301, students are required to learn the foundational skills of proof writing at the same time they master the disciplinary topic of real analysis. The team collaborated with an active researcher in mathematics education to study course effectiveness with an approach that includes active learning and contemporary pedagogical techniques.

Fall 2018 Awardees

  • Development and evaluation of a supplemental hands-on social statistics training materials using the open source application – R Commander (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Takashi Yamashita (Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy) developed ready-to-use supplemental social statistics training materials with the open source statistics application, R Commander. Students’ lack of statistical analytical/reasoning skills, often referred to as the “quantitative gap,” has been a serious concern in social science programs. This project combined two known strategies for improving learning outcomes as well as students’ attitudes toward statistics: development of teaching materials focusing on concepts rather than the mathematics and increasing opportunities for students to practice statistical analysis.
  • Competitive active learning games for inclusive computer science classrooms (Seed Grant) — Benjamin Johnson (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) created competitive active learning exercises as hands-on games to allow students to practice abstract skills. While many of the abstract concepts covered in high level computer science classes are easy to grasp from an explanation, they require a great deal of practice before they can be intuitively understood by students. The variety of games were designed with consideration of scoring methods that evaluate whether the students benefit from the exercise, accessibility, inclusivity, and generalizability of the creation in other fields of study.

Spring 2018 Awardees

  • Math, Fiction and Video: A STEAM Project (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multidisciplinary team led by Manil Suri (Mathematics and Statistics) explored the use of fiction and video in mathematics instruction, in the context of a redesign of Math 120, restructured around the Pl’s math novel, The Godfather of Numbers. This novel weaves in some of the present topics along with new ones, and can be expected to evoke a much stronger “interest experience” response in students. The team developed a detailed website that includes mathematical exercises derived from the novel’s plotline, several short narrative videos to promote the understanding of key concepts, and a series of essays for publication in national media outlets.
  • “These Aren’t the Kids I signed up for”: General Education Teacher Candidates in Special Education Settings (Adaptation Grant) — Michele Stites (Education) provided an opportunity for two groups of UMBC teacher candidates in early childhood, elementary, and secondary programs to complete an early field experience working in an inclusive setting. The teacher candidates were placed in one of UMBC’s professional development schools where they were mentored by an in-service special educator, spent three hours a week observing and assisting in-service special educators, and taught lessons in these classrooms under the guidance of their special education mentor teachers and a UMBC designated supervisor. This allowed UMBC’s teacher candidates to obtain authentic experience working with students of diverse abilities, a unique project in a field in which extensive review has indicated that general education teacher preparation programs do not include targeted field work in special education settings.

Fall 2017 Awardee

  • Reimagining the Beginning Conducting Curriculum (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant) — A team led by Brian Kaufman (Music) completed a study that evaluated student reflections in a beginning conducting course in order to understand how the structure of the course and the process-focused assignments impacted student learning. These reflections were written in UMBC’s project-based conducting class with the goal of helping students identify and develop successful practice strategies as well as experience and create their own process for approaching a conducting score. This study helped address the research showing that many standard beginning conducting class books focus primarily on the development of generic conducting gestures and lack comprehensive skill building in musical score study.

Spring 2017 Awardees

  • Broadening Student Engagement with Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies (Implementation and Research Grant) — A multi-disciplinary team led by Anita Komlodi (Information Systems) designed curricula to introduce Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) technologies to UMBC students across disciplines. The team developed and offered one introductory VR/AR course for students in non-technical majors. They also developed educational modules for several Human-Centered Computing graduate courses, which can later be adapted to other technical courses.
  • Integrated Team-based Active-Learning Redesign of Introductory Microeconomics: Building a Supportive and Exciting Climate in the Classroom (Adaptation Grant) — A team led by Bing Ma (Economics) redesigned the introductory microeconomics course using team-based learning (TBL) in order to address certain challenges of effectively teaching large classes. The course redesign involved developing online modules for students to complete prior to class, as well as a unified sequence of in-class activities that students complete in small groups. The team has also developed training for undergraduate peer tutors who will facilitate in-class TBL activities and staff an out-of-class learning lab.
  • How does student mindset affect learning of non-STEM majors in STEM classes? (Seed Grant) — Suzanne Braunschweig (Geography and Environmental Science and Interdisciplinary Science) led a multi-disciplinary team that created and implemented an instrument to study the mindset and motivation of non-STEM students taking STEM classes. Based on the results of this survey, the team has developed and implemented classroom interventions for moving students toward a growth mindset, which led to better student learning outcomes and deeper appreciation among these students for science and mathematics.

Fall 2016 Awardees

  • lntercultural Tales: Learning With Baltimore’s Immigrant Communities (Adaptation Grant) — A team led by Tania Lizarazo (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication and Global Studies, joint appointment) launched a project that brings UMBC students studying Spanish or Global Studies into collaboration with Latinx immigrants in the local community to co-produce digital stories of the immigrants’ experiences. The project aimed to enhance students’ language abilities and cultural competence while raising immigrants’ visibility in the local community and disrupting negative stereotypes about them.
  • From Service to Study: Creating a Better Environment for UMBC’s Student Veterans (Seed Grant) — A multi-disciplinary team led by Meredith Oyen (History), addressed issues in student veterans’ transition from military service to university studies at UMBC through two efforts: 1) collecting the student veterans’ oral histories and sharing them with the rest of the campus community, and 2) implementing “Green Zone Training” to create a visible network of faculty and staff on campus who are conversant in veterans’ issues and willing and able to offer assistance to student veterans who need it.

Spring 2016 Awardees

  • The Baltimore Metropolitan Area Study on Race, Inequality and the City: A Graduate Student Survey Research and Training Program (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Cedric Herring (Language, Literacy, and Culture) built a multi-disciplinary Graduate Student Survey Research and Training Program at UMBC. This program emphasizes questions surrounding race and inequality in the multi-ethnic context of Baltimore, yet is designed with flexibility in mind: Specific research questions have developed over time, and the design of the studies have been responsive to emerging issues. The emphasis was on gathering data (on a bi-annual basis) that can span the interests of academic researchers with basic research questions as well as applied research of particular relevance to public policy.
  • Incorporating CNC Machining in a Machine Design Course (Implementation and Research Grant) — Neil Rothman (Mechanical Engineering) led a project that integrates low cost computer numerical controlled (CNC) machine tools into ENME 304–Machine Design, a junior level design course required of all ME students. Since this course focuses on the design of machine elements and includes a project where students must design, build, and test a “machine” to meet specific project requirements, it provides a fertile context for training students in conventional fabrication process and assisting them in acquiring skills and knowledge crucial for the workforce.
  • Student-Led Survey Projects to Enhance Analytical Skills in the Social Sciences (Seed Grant) — Ian Anson (Political Science) implemented a collaborative, student-directed approach to political science research that entails the writing, implementation, and analysis of a national online survey in POLI 330, a junior-level course on public opinion. Students collectively proposed research hypotheses, created survey questions, engaged in pre-tests of the survey instrument in a laboratory-style, self-directed format, and launched the survey online. Students then analyzed their chosen hypothesis and interpreted the results of the survey. The principal investigator used a mixed-methods approach to measure learning outcomes, student engagement, and student satisfaction.
  • Improving Student Support to Reduce Academic Integrity Violations for Computer Science I and II (Seed Grant) — Katherine Gibson and Jeremy Dixon (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) collaborated to improve teaching around academic integrity issues by developing audio-visual case studies for improving student comprehension of the academic integrity policy. They developed guided problem sets and offered tutoring sessions to improve students’ understanding of the course material. They evaluated the effectiveness of these improved methods by studying the occurrence of academic integrity violations before and after their implementation.

Fall 2015 Awardees

  • Virtual Reality Design for Science: Integrating Research, Communication, and Learning for Interdisciplinary Training (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Jian Chen (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) harnessed the growing interest and popularity of virtual reality through the creation of a new course designed to challenge graduate and senior undergraduate students to collaboratively write, review, and critique research proposals. The project-oriented class introduces students to the use of hybrid reality displays, 3D modeling, visualization, and fabrication to conduct and analyze scientific research. The new course embraces the university’s goal of advancing interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research activity.
  • Designing and Developing Effective Mobile Applications (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Viviana Cordova (Visual Arts) and Nilanjan Banerjee (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) created an interdisciplinary project that teaches both designers and developers the life cycle and project management of mobile application development. Working with professional clients, visual arts and computer science students used teamwork to tackle real-world projects with deadlines, milestones, and budget constraints. Throughout the semester, students from the Advanced Interface Design and Mobile Programming classes collaborated to apply their design and programming experience to develop smartphone applications for clients.

Spring 2015 Awardees

  • Learning and Innovation at the Interface of Mathematics and Medicine: A NEW Approach (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Bradford Peercy (Mathematics and Statistics) proposed the Neuromathematical Experience Workgroup (NEW), a new approach to training students on the interface of mathematics and neurosciences that focuses on interdisciplinary, team-based experiences. A fundamental change in the nature of biological research toward quantitative sciences has created a need for interdisciplinary collaboration in biology and mathematics and statistics. Through the NEW project graduate and advanced undergraduate students developed core skills and tools required in mathematics and neuroscience to form a common foundation that has prepared them for future careers in neuroscience and as research and teaching faculty.
  • NEXT at UMBC: Researching Connections Between Applied Learning, Affective Learning, and Student Success (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Hannah Schmitz (Shriver Center) trained an interdisciplinary team of graduate students to investigate the interconnection between applied learning and student affective development. This analysis has set them on a path to generating metrics to help assess the contribution of applied learning experiences, such as internships, research, study abroad, and service-learning to our students’ academic, social, professional, and civic development.
  • Explore Baltimore Heritage: A Partnership Between Baltimore Heritage and UMBC (Adaptation Grant) — A team led by Denise Meringolo (History) expanded UMBC’s partnership with Baltimore Heritage through supporting the organization’s goals of developing educational material, while also deepening UMBC students’ learning experience and professional development. Specifically, this collaboration granted students in the History program the opportunity to build meaningful historical content for Explore Baltimore Heritage, a mobile app that lets people build self-guided tours of the many unique historic places of Baltimore and its neighborhoods.
  • Connections: A Transfer Student Experience Course (Seed Grant) —Diane Alonso (Shady Grove) created a transfer student experience course that uses the principles of Interprofessional Education (IPE) to bring students from different disciplines together in a technology-rich active learning environment and challenge them to think beyond their physical and mental boundaries. This innovative course is based on our First Year Experience program and has be integral in helping transfer students to UMBC at Shady Grove learn and grow as students and professionals.

Fall 2014 Awardees

  • Pilot Study of an Integrated, Active, Team-Based Learning Redesign of MATH 155, Applied Calculus (Adaptation Grant) — Matthias Gobbert (Mathematics and Statistics) led a team of faculty to redesign MATH 155, Applied Calculus to incorporate active and team-based learning, change the meeting pattern, and integrate the course with other departmental initiatives, including QuizZero and the Math Gym. Delivery of content in the redesigned course shifted to online lectures with in-class active application of techniques, including problem-solving in teams, supported by a TA and undergraduate assistants.
  • Baltimore Stories: Emerging Media Across the Curriculum (Adaptation Grant) — Nicole King (American Studies) led a collaborative teaching innovation that brings together courses in American Studies, Media and Communication Studies, and Visual Arts to work with the Center for Emerging Media, a Baltimore non-profit, to produce audio oral histories focused on Baltimore residents and neighborhoods. The oral histories have been edited and produced for broadcast on WEAA during the Marc Steiner Show.

Spring 2014 Awardees

  • Replaying the Past: Building a Digital Game for the History Classroom (Implementation and Research Grant) — Anne Sarah Rubin (History) led a team that was awarded funding to bring together History and Game Development students to create a new tool for history education. Students from both disciplines collaborated to build an educational game that immerses players in Civil War Baltimore, allowing them to work with original documents and experience the limitations faced by real-time historical actors.
  • The Future of Feedback: An Audio-Only Response to Student Writing (Seed Grant) — Sally Shivnan (English), assuming the role of former English PI from Holly Sneeringer, led a team that explored the use of audio comments–recorded using iAnnotate for iPads–as a way to produce effective, timely comments on drafts of students papers.

Fall 2013 Awardees

  • Exploring Opportunities and Challenges for Wearable Computing in Classroom Settings (Implementation and Research Grant) — Shaun Kane (Information Systems) explored the potential of wearable computing technology, such as Google Glass, for augmenting the classroom environment, especially for increasing the instructor’s awareness of student progress. The project became inactive because the lead investigator left UMBC to take a position at another institution.
  • Quantitative Reasoning: Measurement & Skills Lab (Implementation and Research Grant) — William LaCourse (Chemistry and Biochemistry and Natural and Mathematical Sciences) led a team to develop a foundational skills laboratory course for STEM majors focused on quantitative reasoning using measurement.
  • Financial Self-Efficacy of School of Social Work Students (Implementation and Research Grant) — Carolyn Tice (Social Work) led a team to investigate social work students’ perceptions and financial knowledge and increase their financial self-efficacy through creation of a series of workshops and seminars on such topics as debt literacy, financial capability, and application to vulnerable populations.
  • Leveraging Technology to Improve Small Group Advising in COEIT (Seed Grant) — A team led by Emily Abrams-Stephens (College of Engineering and Information Technology) developed a small-group advising system for students in the college.
  • Individualized Degree Design Lab (IDDL) (Seed Grant) — Steven McAlpine (Interdisciplinary Studies) led a team that created a lab where undergraduate interdisciplinary studies students are guided to integrate and articulate their career aspirations, research interests, and learning objectives into a cohesive plan.

Spring 2013 Awardees

  • Using SimLabs (Implementation and Research Grant) — Mauricio Bustos (Biology) led a team that developed computer simulations of lab experiments based on mathematical models within our biology lab curriculum (SimLabs) to provide a structured environment to allow students to focus on the critical biology concepts rather than on rote lab procedures.
  • Hands-On Problem Solving in Chemical Engineering (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Joshua Enszer (Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering) created a structured sequence of hands-on activities that cross-cut a five-semester sequence of required courses in chemical engineering. The project involved construction of a customizable, multi-function laboratory apparatus, including pumps and piping systems, a heat exchanger, and process control hardware and software to be used directly in the required chemical engineering laboratory courses, plus as a new component to traditionally lecture-only courses in the sophomore and junior sequences.
  • Metacognitive Activity Promotions (MAPs) in Chemical Engineering Thinking (Seed Grant) — A team led by Mariajosé Castellanos (Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering) employed two student assistants to support an analysis of students’ understanding of chemical engineering concepts, as reflected in samples of their reflective writing in two junior-level courses in the discipline.

Fall 2012 Awardees

  • The Math Gym (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Nagaraj Neerchal (Mathematics and Statistics) developed The Math Gym, featuring “conditioning coaches” and “personal trainers” who help students keep their foundational math skills in good working order. Moreover, the gym promotes healthy math habits among all our students, drawing a clear analogy between the regular work outs and conditioning needed to maintain both athletic and mathematical skill.
  • Active Computing Teaching and InnoVation Environment (Implementation and Research Grant) — A team led by Marie desJardins (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) created ACTIVE, a dynamic “laptop laboratory.” The lab supports innovation in computing courses – with a particular focus on improving the retention and success of women, underrepresented minorities and transfer students. The laboratory extends active-learning environments, such as CASTLE and the new English writing labs, to a new area of the university.
  • The Wisdom Institute (Seed Grant) — A team led by Craig Saper (Language, Literacy, and Culture) created an institute to expand the role for emeritus professors at UMBC.
  • Putting Students’ Language Skills to Work (Seed Grant) — A team led by Susanne Sutton (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication) developed experiential and service-learning course requirements for undergraduates studying German, with a particular focus on connecting students to Baltimore’s German community.
  • Service-Learning in Statics (Seed Grant) — A team led by Anne Spence (Mechanical Engineering) developed new service-learning requirements for undergraduates studying mechanical engineering, with a particular focus on identifying components that increase retention and student success.
  • EHS (Seed Grant) — Bruce Walz (Emergency Health Services) led a project to integrate individual cameras into EHS exercises, so that students received more personalized and immediate feedback on their performance.

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