Story Author: Indiana University Media Relations
Publish Date: Not Available
Source Publication: IUB

Program builds on five years of success

IU and SBC team up again this year to support faculty in exploring the use of technology in teaching and learning. Technology-enhanced instruction is a growing emphasis in education at all levels across the state. The IU SBC Fellows Program provides faculty grant recipients with the resources necessary to examine and develop innovative ways of teaching. This year's program (Round 6) focuses on leveraging the capabilities of IU's learning environment, a set of tools, technologies, and strategies that support teaching and learning, including:

* Oncourse Collaboration and Learning (CL) environment. Oncourse CL is a Web-based system giving students round-the-clock access to course syllabi; chat, discussion, and mail tools for class interactions; online quizzes and surveys; space for sharing files; and customized learning tools -- all in a single, easy-to-use, personalized environment. For faculty, Oncourse makes it easy to provide a wide range of online learning tools without knowing how to program for the Web.

* Learning spaces and wireless technologies. Newly developed learning spaces and wireless technologies will expand the learning environment.

* ePortfolio. Students use ePortfolio to create a personal, digital collection of assignments, documents, videos, and other materials to demonstrate learning achievement, similar to an artist's portfolio.
Instructors, potential employers, and the students themselves can use the portfolio to assess a student's progress.

* Multi-campus collaboration. The IU SBC Fellows Program emphasizes faculty collaboration and mentoring to gain the widest benefit of innovators' efforts and outcomes, extending the next generation learning environment across the University.

Grants will be awarded in three categories:

1. Preparing for Innovation. Faculty will be invited to share best practices for solving the complex issues associated with moving course materials from Oncourse Classic to Oncourse CL, while considering opportunities for taking advantage of CL's expanded capabilities.

2. Examining Innovation. Faculty will conduct applied research on instructional strategies using one or more of IU's learning environments, and will advocate for technology innovation.

3. Implementing Innovation. Faculty will create and implement innovative, multi-disciplinary uses of one or more of IU's learning environments to enhance student learning.

All grantees will be asked to mentor other faculty in the use of their innovations, contribute to the IU good practices database, publish in related journals as appropriate, make campus presentations, and participate in the annual IU SBC Fellows Summer Leadership Forum. The
2005 forum is scheduled for May 13, 10:30am-12:30pm, in IT 152 at IUPUI.

IU established the SBC Fellows Program in the fall of 1999, with a gift of $1,000,000 from SBC to support a program of innovation in teaching and learning with technology. Since 1999, five rounds of funding and awards have made possible 54 innovative projects that span the IU campuses and represent the gamut of disciplines and subjects.

SBC-funded projects have included such diverse subjects as Chinese and African language instructions via the Web, using gaming theory to teach energy efficiency, a virtual microscope that dental students use to learn cell biology, an online music theory placement test, a CD-ROM to help pre-service teachers learn how to teach students who display disruptive classroom behavior, guidelines for teaching a class with students in more than one country, individualized instruction in English pronunciation for foreign students, digitizing the eminent Ars Femina Library of music by women composers, teaching color online, Web-based tools for studying the Andromeda galaxy, a Web- and telephone-based Spanish course for health care where students complete tasks and interact with one another while their skills are being assessed, and using robot construction to teach programming languages.

For details about the program, including instructions for submitting proposals, see http://sbcf.iu.edu.

Contact:

Carol Kegeris
University Information Technology Services Indiana University
317 278-4833
ckegeris@iu.edu