2009 Active Learning Grant recipients announced
This past April four faculty members were awarded Active Learning Grants by Campus Instructional Consulting, with generous support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. Grants were awarded on a competitive basis and peer reviewed from an open call for proposals. The purpose of the grants is to support faculty in the design or redesign of a specific course. Grant recipients this year were Professors Stephanie DeBoer (Department of Communication and Culture), Tarez Samra Graban (Department of English), Susanne Even (Department of Germanic Studies), and Ben Motz (Psychological and Brain Sciences).
Professor DeBoer plans to develop new projects and assignments for I205 International Communication: Digital Media, a required course in the International Studies Program. These changes will prompt a more meaningful creative and critical engagement with global digital media for students. Using familiar software, I205 students will participate in reflective, interactive projects, including a class blog and an evolving group presentation. These long-term, hands-on projects will help students to understand the contexts, ideologies, and terms involved in global media creation; students will also develop skills they can use to analyze the dynamics of power mobilized by media technologies.
Professor Graban will use her Active Learning Grant to plan and implement a new course in the Department of English that will provide students with a unique experience to participate in archiving historical documents in IU's collection. L470 Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies: "Vandals in the Stacks" will not only introduce advanced English students to basic preservation tasks, it will also help them recognize the importance of archiving as civic engagement, and as an important component in any kind of historical research. To accomplish these goals, Prof. Graban has teamed up with the IU Archives and Office of Records Management. L470 students will help to organize and preserve an original, relatively unprocessed collection of archival materials, giving them a hands-on experience unlike any other course on campus.
Professor Even, along with her colleague Troy Byler, will redesign G300, a fifth-semester German grammar course. This course is required for both majors and minors and aims to prepare them for future courses centered on literary study; consequently, it involves assignments that necessitate a high level of grammar competence. Professor Even will use techniques based on drama pedagogy to help students acquire not only enhanced grammatical skill, but also a positive attitude toward grammar, which learners often perceive as a set of frustrating rules to be memorized. Instead of written exercises or structural overviews, students will learn grammar in practical, dramatic role-playing situations, combined with linguistic analysis. This innovation will help them learn grammar in a holistic sense, by engaging them with the material socially, cognitively, and kinesthetically.
Professor Motz will use his Active Learning Grant to revise P335 Cognitive Psychology, a large, required course for majors in psychology. In addition to restructuring the course around active learning units, Prof. Motz will specifically design a final project in which students working in groups will produce a public service announcement (PSA) video about avoiding bad decision-making. This project will encourage students to use course material creatively to address and demonstrate their understanding of an intriguing question in cognitive psychology: how do people make decisions? The collaborative nature of the project will help them fill in knowledge gaps, since a wide variety of students in addition to psychology majors take P335, and the application of course concepts to students' own experiences will promote long-term learning as well as engagement during class.
For more information about Active Learning Grants please contact George Rehrey, grehrey@indiana.edu, at Campus Instructional Consulting. To learn more about past Active Learning Grant recipients, please click on the Faculty Showcases tab at the top of this page.
