2017 Provost’s Learning Innovations Grants 2017 PROVOST ... · 2017 Provost’s Learning Innovations Grants 8 STATEMENT OF EFFICACY (two pages maximum) Provide a brief description

2017 Provost’s Learning Innovations Grants

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2017 PROVOST’S LEARNING INNOVATIONS GRANTS

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

1. Complete this Application Form, in its entirety, and save as “Lastname_Firstname_APP” (using your name).

2. Complete the Budget Worksheet and save as “Lastname_Firstname_BUDGET” (using your name).

3. Ask your Department Head to complete the Department Head Certification, scan and save as, “Lastname_Firstname_SIG” (using your name).

4. Email all documents to [email protected], no later than 11:59pm EST, January 25, 2017.

If you have any questions about completing this application, please email [email protected], or contact Michael Starenko at 585-475-5035 or [email protected].

APPLICANT INFORMATION This application is for a:

x Exploration Grant

Focus Grant

Principal Applicant name: Pamela Berkeley

Faculty title: Assistant professor Email: [email protected] Phone: 585-475-6163 (Full-time only)

College: NTID Department: Engineering Studies

Department Head name: Dino Laury Email: [email protected] Others involved in the project (if any): Anju Gupta Project name: Game-Changing Recitation: Creating a Board Game for the Thermodynamics Curriculum Total funds requested (as calculated on the budget worksheet): $5000 (requests of $1,000 to $5,000 will be considered)


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BUDGET There is a fillable PDF worksheet to calculate your budget. You can download the worksheet at rit.edu/ili/plig.

• The total shown on this worksheet must match the “Total funds requested” in the Applicant Information section of this application form

• If awarded, additional funds will be provided to cover any benefits and ITS expenses associated with the salary budget requested

• Note that any equipment or other materials purchased with grant funds are the property of your department and revert to the department after your project is completed

TIMELINE Please indicate any variances to the planned PLIG 2017 schedule and your reasons. If you do not intend to deviate from the schedule, you may leave this section blank.

Task Date Proposed Variance and Reason

Full project plan submitted August 23, 2017

Preliminary findings submitted January 10, 2018

Summary of final findings submitted August 22, 2018

Final budget accounting submitted August 22, 2018

Teaching and Learning Commons submission due (posting a summary of findings, examples of teaching designs or materials, etc.)

October 3, 2018

Participation in Teaching and Learning Services PLIG dissemination event (e.g., PLIG Showcase)

November 2018


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STATEMENT OF UTILITY (two pages maximum) Using the evaluation criteria outlined in the Proposal Evaluation section of the PLIG website, please provide an overview of the project you are proposing, including: • Project objectives

• An explanation of the teaching/learning problem(s) it is designed to address

• An explanation of the significance of the project to student outcomes and/or the student experience.

• A brief description of how the project integrates with activity already underway at RIT in a priority area and/or how this approach has been successfully used at RIT already.

Objectives

This project will employ a board game format to actively engage, motivate, and educate students in thermodynamics, specifically on the topic of finding state properties in the context of thermodynamic cycles. The board game play will be incorporated into recitation periods. Through control groups and pre- and post-testing and -surveying, this project will seek to assess how topical board games affect a) student affinity for the topic and for their major, and b) student learning outcomes related to state points and thermodynamic cycles.

The project will be incorporated into the CHME 310: Applied Thermodynamics course offered by the Chemical Engineering Department (class size ~ 55 ) and potentially be included in other thermodynamics courses on campus.

Problem Statement

Thermodynamics is the field of study at the center of sustainability efforts. In order for society to make headway on issues of transportation, built environment, and power generation sustainability, for example, engineering students must have a solid understanding of the subject and must also have enough enthusiasm for the field that they pursue it in their careers. At present, many students struggle to make it through the course, and many even have to repeat the course in order to continue on in their engineering programs. This is particularly true of deaf and hard of hearing students (dhh), who will be a sub-focus of this proposal.

Traditionally, thermodynamic recitation periods typically involve passive learning (Instructors showing Powerpoint slides or doing work on the board), or under-motivated, dull, and isolated active learning (worked problems). The latter problem is a particular issue for millennial students, who do not spend as much face-to-face time with their peers, and who have to enter a workforce that increasingly recognizes the importance of social skills and teamwork. Additionally, thermodynamics is a field of study that involves concepts and equipment that students are rarely exposed to in daily life, and due to equipment expenses and safety concerns, even lab time spent acquiring hands-on skills with these concepts is limited.

The question becomes: how do we provide students with ample hands-on, active learning, while increasing their engagement in the field (and with each other?) And, how can we include dhh students in the process?

Project Significance

A curricular board game would be an easily transferable active learning intervention for any thermodynamics classroom on campus or in another university to incorporate. It can include game elements that require content knowledge (e.g. the processes in a cycle, standard assumptions for component performance), definitions (whether mathematical or verbal), and problem solving (both abstract and concrete), thereby creating a holistic learning experience for students. It may also inspire board games to be created in other technical subject areas, such as heat transfer or fluid dynamics.


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STATEMENT OF UTILITY (continued)

It is reasonable to expect that in addition to the mechanisms of game play encouraging dopamine production and learning, the novelty of playing a game in the classroom will do likewise. Students will ideally leave the course feeling more motivated to continue in the field and perhaps in the focus area, specifically. They should additionally see reduced exam anxiety, imposter syndrome, feelings of exclusion, and should have improved test scores over their classmates who do not have curricular board games in the classroom.

Playing board games in the classroom may also be a good way to erode the social barriers to inclusion in engineering, including tangible barriers (the ones that often exist between dhh and hearing students, for example) or intangible barriers (gender, race, or other non-traditional backgrounds for engineers). Game play can be designed to be understandable without verbal interactions, and the act of playing the game together will help students who are traditionally excluded to feel like they are part of the class of engineers as a whole.

Ongoing Efforts

The proposed project fits into the following ongoing efforts:

• Student engagement – playing games in the classroom is an effort to get more students involved and interested in the subject of thermodynamics.

• Learning mindsets – the nature of games is conducive to a learning mindset that understands the importance of failure and that uses knowledge of past mistakes to improve future performance.

• Small group work - students will be playing in teams of approximately 4 at a time, giving them the opportunity to interact with each other in small groups.

• Peer instruction - through the game play, students will be educating each other through their own actions, decisions, and enforcement of game rules.

• Teaching millennials - millennials have fewer opportunities to interact face-to-face, with all the online socialization they experience; this project will encourage them to interact with each other in person and with a physical game (rather than an online one).


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STATEMENT OF CREATIVITY (three paragraphs maximum) Provide a brief description of how this is a novel approach, or a new application of an existing mode or model of teaching and learning, and/or research about how teaching and learning represents a new paradigm. (Please note that special consideration will be given to proposals that demonstrate a new use/application of a model, system, or technology already in use at RIT.)

Games are known to be effective at improving student learning outcomes. However, at the university level, few games have been incorporated into the curriculum. There is an opportunity to harness the active learning encouraged by games for the delivery of content knowledge and problem-solving skills.

Pedagogical research has uncovered that the presence of dopamine in the brain is necessary for learned material to be retained. Game play, with its built-in incentives and risks, is a natural way to encourage the presence of dopamine during activities intended for student learning. Games also provide instant feedback and peer learning experiences, which both facilitate and incentivize learning. The MAGIC center, as well as individual faculty at NTID, are working on creating curricular or topical games, including a religious studies game (Owen Gottlieb, GCCIS) and a statistics game (Carol Marchetti, NTID). This would be the first thermodynamics game, but would dovetail with an external proposal by the PI to create an entropy video game.

It is possible to create board games that do not rely extensively on spoken language, thereby reducing the need for interpreters in the classroom or, minimally, reducing the likelihood that interpretation deficits might occur. Providing dhh students with a novel method of interacting with their hearing peers directly would be an invaluable contribution of this project.


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STATEMENT OF EFFICACY (two pages maximum) Provide a brief description of the experiment/research design, methodology, and methods of data collection you will use to gauge efficacy.

Personnel

Dr. Pamela Berkeley focused on thermodynamics (and heat transfer) in both undergrad and graduate school. She is currently an assistant professor at NTID, working on various engineering education efforts, including ones specific to educating dhh students in engineering topics. Dr. Berkeley’s scientific research deals with the simulation of energy use in buildings.

Dr. Anju Gupta’s education based research focuses on-designing A) lab modules for K-12 [1, 2] , B) peer learning and assessment course modules, C) Student-driven process oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) lab and classroom courses. Dr. Gupta’s scientific research involves thermal analysis of responsive nanomaterials.

Game Design

The game design will be reminiscent of the board game “Clue”, with elements of “Trivial Pursuit” and strategy games. Players (students) will have to collect sufficient data about each state point so that at the end of the game, they can fully define or analyze the cycle. In order to collect a piece of data (a “clue”) they will have to get the correct answer to a definition (similar to answering a trivia question). The more knowledge students have about processes in the given thermodynamic cycle, and the better they understand how to determine one piece of missing information from other existing information, the more likely they are to win the game.

In order to prevent cheating and issues with self-reporting game performance, game play will include the requirement that students record their moves and results. The winning conditions will be confirmed by the faculty based on the turned-in worked problem for the game.

The game will be designed in such a way that faculty will be able to create new iterations of the game, in order to avoid playing fatigue – that is, students won’t be playing with the exact same data every time, but will have to find different answers or rely on different components or cycle knowledge every time they play. Instructions will be created for adoption of the game by other faculty, so they can set up the game play for their own classes.

Game design will be completed by Dr. Anju Gupta and Dr. Pamela Berkeley during the summer of 2017. Board game pieces will be printed on an in-place 3D printer with existing materials. All game cards and the game board will be printed on in-place printers and mounted on materials purchased by the grant.

Implementation

The game will first be tested in the Fall of 2017. It will be tested for educational efficacy while also being assessed for any gameplay improvements necessary for Spring 2018 roll-out. In both semesters, the students will be given pre and post tests on the subject material for the game in order to establish whether the game improves their course performance more or less than traditional recitation periods. In the Fall semester, when there is only one group for recitation, a control scenario will be created by interspersing traditional recitations with gameplay recitations. In the Spring semester, when multiple sections are available, some sections will be designated as controls, and the performance on pre- and post- tests will be compared between sections.

In addition to academic pre-and post- tests, student perceptions of belonging in and attitude towards both the major and the course will be assessed. A survey instrument will gather the information before and after


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STATEMENT OF EFFICACY (continued)

game play, and in the case of the Spring semester, for both the control and treatment sections.

For all cases, basic demographic information on the students will be collected in order to determine how any effects of incorporating the game into the curriculum affects the performance and attitudes of underrepresented minorities, women, and dhh students relative to their peers.

Data Collection

As mentioned in the previous section, demographic, pre- and post- test academic performance, and pre- and post- survey instruments will be collected. Additionally, students will be required to turn in their records and calculations from the game play. This information will be tracked anonymously (through an anonymous number) for the entirety of the semester, in order to compare game performance, including errors in play, with academic performance and morale in the course.

Assessment

.A student survey will be conducted to investigate student's experiences after the completion of the activity through the following questionaire (adopted [2])-

Q1. The activity help me understand the background, learning goals, and fundamentals to study the subject and complete the course work.

Q2: The background information, concept questions and problems, and design problems of the class activity are clear and understandable.

Q3: Every group member was prepared well for the activities and she/he was willing to work together to complete the game in a timeline.

Q4: The games actually helped me learn certain concepts better and develop critical thinking and problem skills.

Q5: Terms and/or concepts that I was unsure of became clearer with the lab activities.

Q6: Each group member was knowledgeable and skillful in the subjects.

Q7: The instructor was helpful to guide the activities and to develop skills (learning, thinking, and problem solving) during the class and lab.

1. Gupta A, Hill, N, Valenzuela, P, Johnson, E, Introducing Chemical Reactions concepts in K-6 through a hands-on food spherification and spaghetti–fication experiment, JSTEM, accepted

2. Gupta A, Fueling Chemical Engineering Concepts with Biodiesel production: A Professional Development Experience for K-12 Pre-service Teachers, Journal of STEM Education 2015, 16 (1): 25-30

3. Kim, S.S., Faseyitan,S.O., Green plastics laboratory by process oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL), ASEE Annual Conference, 2014


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DISSEMINATION PLAN (optional) Provide details about the journal, conference, show, or other external vehicle with strong potential for dissemination of your results. Include supporting documentation, such as preliminary interest or acceptance, with your application, if available. (Please note that special consideration will be given to proposals that have a defined opportunity for external dissemination, such as an academic journal or professional conference.)

ILI/TLS will assist with arranging channels for disseminating results within RIT (e.g., annual PLIG Showcase).

CoPl Gupta is an active member of Chemical Engineering Education division at American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), American Chemical Society (ACS) and American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The learning outcomes of the proposed activity will be disseminated as follows-

1. AIChE Annual conference, Oct. 29 – Nov. 3 2017, Minneapolis, MN (funds requested)

Dr. Gupta is co-chairing a session titled- "Fun Thermodynamics" is not an Oxymoron along with Donald P Visco, a renowned thermodynamist, and author of the Thermodynamics textbook.

2. Present the findings at the PLIG awards showcase at the end of the funding period

3. Submit a paper to distinguished peer-reviewed Chemical Engineering Education Journal Publication (publication cost will be covered through Gleason start-up funds).

Dr. Gupta is a reviewer of this journal and has reviewed Thermodynamics based submission.

PI Berkeley will participate in above-listed dissemination activities, and will additionally work with colleagues in the Mechanical Engineering department at RIT to promote the incorporation of the game into other departments on campus.


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ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS Please address these questions, if needed.

Will your project require assistance for extensive or unusual media, multimedia, simulation, and/or software development? If so, please explain?

All courses offered by RIT must be accessible to students with disabilities, according to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (rit.edu/studentaffairs/disabilityservices/info). Is your proposed teaching approach accessible to all students, with reasonable accommodation? If not, please explain.

RIT abides by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), which prohibits instructors from making students' identities, course work, and educational records public without their consent (rit.edu/xVzNE). Will any data gathering or sharing for your project raise any FERPA issues? If so, please explain.

No.

It is our goal to design the game to be directly inclusive of all students.

Any data collected from students will be gathered anonymously and in accordance with HRB approval.


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DISSEMINATION AGREEMENT By completing this grant application, I agree to provide the materials described here, in support of disseminating what is learned from this project to other faculty at RIT.

I also agree to return all/a portion of the funds that I receive for this project to RIT if I fail to complete or provide the materials described here. • Full project plan (including roles and responsibilities, milestone dates, and pertinent project details) • Overview of preliminary findings (may include experiment/study design, lessons learned, initial data

collection, and/or literature review summary) • Final summary of findings (including data collection, lessons learned, implications for further study, and which

may be in the form of an article abstract, conference presentation outline, or short report) • Final budget accounting (reconciliation of budget provided with your application and the actual project

expenses) • Teaching and Learning Commons posting (a summary of findings and examples of teaching designs or

materials) • Participation in an ILI/TLS dissemination event (e.g., PLIG Showcase)

By submitting this application, I accept this agreement. ___PMB__ (applicant, please initial here)


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DEPARTMENT HEAD CERTIFICATION I support this PLIG application and budget, and verify that the principal applicant is a full-time faculty member in good standing in my department.

Principal Applicant name: ____________________________________________________________________

Department Head Name (PRINT): _______________________________________ Email: __________________

Department Head Signature: ___________________________________________ Date: _______________

NOTE: When signed, please scan and email to: [email protected]

Pam

Text Box

Pamela Berkeley

PLIG Budget WorksheetApplicant's Name:

Personnel Purpose/Justification AmountFull-Time Faculty/Staff

123

Adjuncts, Part-Time Faculty/Staff, Summer Salary123

Student Workers, Graduate Assistants123

T Personnel Total

Equipment Purpose/Justification Amount123

T Equipment Total

Travel Purpose/Justification Amount123

T Travel Total

Other (Specify) Purpose/Justification Amount123456

T Other Expenses Total

Total Award Request

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2017 Provost’s Learning Innovations Grants 2017 PROVOST ... · 2017 Provost’s Learning Innovations Grants 8 STATEMENT OF EFFICACY (two pages maximum) Provide a brief description