FACET is pleased to announce the winners for the third annual Innovate Awards on Excellence in Teaching!
Finalists for the category of “Collaborative Activities” (winner identified below):
Chera LaForge – Winner. Chera is an associate professor of Political Science at Indiana University East. She was nominated for her activity, “Podcasting and the Public Voice” where her students produced three podcasts on the presidential campaign cycle. Each 15-minute podcast required research, writing, recording, and editing to create a professional product. The students initially felt intimidated by the challenge, but by the end of the semester, they acknowledged how much they enjoyed this part of the course. Each recording went above and beyond the minimum requirements of the assignment and students were more confident in talking about the campaigns afterward.
Eric Robinson and Joshua Danish. Both from the School of Education at IUB, Eric and Joshua were nominated for their work entitled “Cities on the Edge of War Game.” This activity included a 6-week-long immersive board game. The students played the role of different faction leaders in different city states during the period leading up to and during the Peloponnesian War. They worked together to decide whether to build their military, move military units, make alliances, etc. Student learning matched or, in some cases, surpassed that of students in a traditional lecture course. The majority said in a post semester survey that this was the best course they had ever taken in their entire time at IU.
Finalists for the category of “Community Engagement” (winner identified below):
Brenda Bailey-Hughes. Brenda is a Senior Lecturer in the IUB Kelley School of Business. She was nominated for her activity titled “Global Intelligence: A Burmese American Community Institute and Hutton Honors College Collaboration.” The Burmese American Community Institute serves Indianapolis’s community of over 19,000 Burmese refugees. Each of the last two falls, Brenda’s students have partnered with the institute on special projects such as collaborating with college-bound refugees to complete their college and scholarship essays. IU students practice their intercultural communication skills and last year there was a 100 percent enrollment in post-secondary institutions for students who participated in the project.
Lesa Huber. Lesa, from the School of Public Health at IUB, was nominated for her work titled “Community/University Partnerships that Build Dementia Friendly Communities.” This hybrid model of training for local businesses interested in becoming Dementia Friendly became a learning strategy to combine online content with face-to-face interaction between a student and one local business representative. This project amplified the reach of IU Health’s DFB initiative, with over 120 business contacts since August 2017. Over 75 percent of students agreed that the DFB project enriched their perspective on being a public health professional, and 83 percent agreed that the DFB project helped them apply knowledge learned in the course to a real-life situation.
Jacquelyn Singleton – Winner. Jacquelyn, an Assistant Professor in Elementary Education, was nominated for her work titled “Reading Clinic.” Jacquelyn and the IU Southeast School of Education founded Reading Clinic for senior Elementary-Education majors to help struggling readers from New Albany-Floyd County Schools. The Reading Clinic meets the needs of approximately 60 struggling readers and allows elementary age students to attend the Reading Clinic at no cost. 30 IUS education students gain valuable service learning experiences providing direct instruction to students. Jacquelyn has received support from the Horseshoe Foundation to provide free tutoring and reading books, teaching materials, and iPads to assess and track student progress for years to come. Reading Clinics are held three times per year.
Finalists for the category of “Creative Uses of Online Tools” (winner identified below):
Dawn Kutza. Dawn is a Lecturer in the Kelley School of Business and was nominated for her activity titled “Team-Based Peer-Evaluation & Self Reflection.” The Communication and Professional Skills Department within the Kelley School of Business integrated the self-and-peer-evaluation tool Qualtrics 360 into three years of its curriculum. The tool provides students with longitudinal anonymous peer-feedback on teamwork, communication, and leadership, identifying specific areas for improvement and creating self-awareness, reflection, and personal growth. The easy-to-read reports help Dawn address global concerns and personalized learning goals for each student. Student feedback showed student’s reflections and a new self-awareness for future group projects.
Andrea Quenette – Winner. Andrea is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at IU East. Andrea was nominated for her work titled “Using Twitter to Simulate Real-World Events in the Classroom.” This activity involved four simulated real-world events that students engaged with through Twitter. Students were assigned specific roles such as journalist or government official. They worked through simulated terrorist attacks, reading, researching, and connecting current events, actual media coverage, and other web tools and resources to the simulated scenarios. They collaborated, discussed, debated, integrated and applied course content via Twitter. Students reported that they enjoyed the class and how it encouraged them to have greater attention to detail in current news and media content.
Finalists for the category of “Skills Across the Curriculum” (winner identified below):
David Kim. David is a Lecturer in Criminal Justice at IU East. He was nominated for his work titled “Through the Lens of Justice: Body Camera Experimentation.” In this activity, his students wear body cameras like those used by current U.S. Law Enforcement and walk to public areas, record two hours of footage, and observe how their own behavior, in addition to the public’s behavior, changed due to the presence of the cameras. His students wrote reflective papers after the activity. He received feedback such as "... the body camera assignment was a great way to help gain knowledge on a whole other perspective that I did not think I would get to see for this class!"
Arkadiusz Mironko. Arkadiusz is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Department of Entrepreneurship at IU East. He was nominated for his activity “Bringing an International Business Challenge to IUE.” This activity includes an external, collaborative, and live business project and participation with collaborating teams from 40 universities in the US and abroad. The project teams are comprised of 4-5 participants from different universities and countries and encourage students to work together to find new markets or attractions for new businesses. Students have reported that they have a better understanding and that evaluations from external reviewers of their work prove to be an effective hands-on method of learning.
Lisa Russell and Aaron Setterdahl – Winner. Lisa and Aaron, both from IUS, were selected as a finalist for their activity “Let’s Talk… Making Beer!” The exercise leverages students’ thinking skills, improves students’ overall understanding and most importantly increases student-material, student-student, student-teacher, and student-larger-world interactions. In this activity, students are paired in small groups and provided with fresh ingredients involved in the beer making process and are given ‘fill in the blank’ study guides to describe the process. This process encourages students to learn and apply critical thinking and engagement skills across the curriculum.
The finalists from each category shared compelling multi-media presentations about their projects – these presentations remain available.
Watch the Finalist’s Presentations Here
Thank you to everyone who submitted a nomination, to our finalists for creating multi-media presentations, to Natalia Rybas, and to everyone who made the third annual Innovate Awards such a success! Congratulations to our winners!