Date Started: Jan 1, 2007
Status:Completed

Project Description

Ten proposals were selected as the 07-08 Faculty Innovation Grant award recipients. They are:

• Mary Balkun
  English Department
  
  The purpose of this project is the development of a site in Second Life, The House of The Seven Gables, which will be an interactive learning experience for the study of literary texts. Students will have access to a variety of materials that will help them develop a reading of the Hawthorne novel, including visual. audio, and text-based. The interactions will lead students to an understanding of the ways cultural and historical materials can be used in the interpretation of literature. They should then be able to apply the same methods of inquiry to other texts. The theoretical basis for this project is the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, whose method of cultural interpretation, known as "thick description," was influential in the development of both material cultural and new historical analyses of literary texts. In addition to a specific text, the activities and resources in the site will help students better understand general concepts useful for the study of American Gothic literature: Gothicism, Puritanism, and Romanticism, as well as literary concepts such as symbolism, narrative structure, and character development. It will also provide students with experience in a technologically advanced environment; as part of the course requirements, they will add materials they develop to the site.
  
  
  
• Irene De Masi PT, DPT Director of Clincal Education, Kim Poulsen PT, DPT Director of Clinical Education, Jim Phillips PT, PhD, Tom Sowa PhD
  Department of Physical Therapy, Department of Graduate Programs in Health Sciences, School of Graduate Medical Education
  
  The challenge of Directors of Clinical Education, Faculty and Clinical Instructors is to promote an interactive learning environment that facilitates the adult learner experience and promotes the development of competencies necessary for entry level practice throughout the healthcare continuum. The prerequisite foundational didactic knowledge and technical skills necessary to begin clinical internship are concentrated within the first three semesters of the physical therapy program. Mastery of this knowledge and skill is necessary for advanced skill development. However application and integration of this knowledge and skill to patient and clients does not begin until the second year and subsequent years as the student progresses through more challenging clinical internships. The purpose of this pilot project is to develop a video, accessible on the web, which incorporates foundational didactic knowledge and basic skill training taught to Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students within the first two years. This video would be available on the web as a podcast. By utilizing the shoulder complex this video will seek to integrate key components of coursework taught by various professors on this subject which is critical for success in the academic and clinical environments. Current videos available for student learning are predominately content specific in areas of anatomy, goniometry and manual muscle testing. In addition they do not address common conditions seen in the clinic nor serve as a tool to enhance CI/student discussion and learning in the clinical environment. This video would seek to integrate the didactic and skill based techniques taught across the first three semesters and serve as a learning tool to both compliment the initial learning phase, as well as serve, as a resource tool for students during concurrent and future clinical practica and internships. The video can be downloaded onto an I Pod and available to the student throughout their learning. If successful this video can serve as the template for future content areas that would enhance the student's learning experience. Case based learning will be coupled to the video to promote interactive learning within both the academic and clinical settings and facilitate clinical skill judgment and clinical reasoning which is critical for professional development. Lastly this video can be incorporated across disciplines into other SGME programs for their entry level health professional students' learning needs.
  
  

• Matthew Hale
  Graduate Department of Public and Healthcare Administration
  
  I am proposing to train Seton Hall students how to use a computer design program known as Sketch-Up (http://www.sketchup.com/). This free program, created by Google, allows users to graphically design virtually any structure from the ground up. Once students are trained on how to use the software, they will be partnered with a local community development agency and serve as technical assistants in a grassroots neighborhood redesign project. If accepted, I will use the $750 for project related expenses to pay for two graduate students to attend a seminar this summer offered by Google on the Sketch-Up program. These students will then become trainers of other students. The students will come from two courses that I teach at Seton Hall. The first is PSMA 7122NA, a graduate course in the Department of Public and Health care Administration, called Strategic Management and Governance. The second is POLS 2120 AA, an undergraduate political science course, called Philanthropy, Voluntarism and the Nonprofit Sector.
  
  

• Juergen Heinrichs
  Department of Art and Music
  
  This project seeks to create a series of learning objects --here defined as a set of digital resources --that will improve, enhance, and transform the graduate internship course in Seton Hall's MA Program in Museum Professions. An essential module of graduate student training, ARMS 7800 JA INTERNSHIP provides the academic framework for institutional internships that our students conduct in museums, galleries, and related institutions. The tremendous success of the internship program in regards to professional training opportunities and job placements starkly contrasts with the humble, low-tech protocol with which we are operating. Utilizing various digital tools --ranging from Web 2.0-based sociable technologies such as wikis, blogs, over digital archives, to e-portfolios --this project seeks to streamline and transform the course in ways that better accommodate the evolving needs of students and institutions. Improving and professionalizing information exchange between students, graduate program, and host institutions, this project further enhances Seton Hall's academic reputation and professional standing with the major institutions with whom we are cooperating.
  
  

• Anne Hewitt
  Grad. Dept. of Public and Healthcare Administration
  
  River City, an interactive computer simulation for learning about disease transmission and the scientific method of investigation, will be expanded and enhanced to include both community health assessment concepts and managerial epidemiological calculations and techniques appropriate for a graduate level course - PSMA 8511 Managing Community Health Systems. Deliverables include a revised River City application, updated student workbook and teaching manual, which will all be redesigned appropriately for graduate level and include tailored activities and assessments that focus on analysis, synthesis and evaluation of situations and scenarios. This project will serve as a template for integrating future interactive simulations into the MHA curriculum and can also serve as a potential opportunity for other courses at both the graduate level (MPA -health policy focus, MA in Diplomacy -global health, MSN - community health, and undergraduate level - Environmental studies). Opportunities exist for multiple presentations and publications across diverse disciplines including; health administration, community health and public health organizations, and evaluation of online learning environments.
  
  

• Melinda Jenkins, PhD, FNP
  College of Nursing
  
  This project, Health Assessment Templates (HAT), will create electronic templates for students to use when documenting health assessments in the undergraduate nursing lab. Practice with electronic documentation is essential to prepare students for clinical environments with electronic records. Templates will match the current required write-ups, including Comprehensive Health History, Physical Examination by body system, and preliminary Assessment/Diagnoses. In contrast to the current free text write-ups, the innovative HAT project templates will integrate informatics scholarship with health assessment by implementing structured data entry with coded standardized terminology. HAT builds upon the previous informatics work of Dr. Melinda Jenkins, FNP. The project will be assessed by examining aggregate student data to discover learning deficits (a process that is not possible with the current text write-ups) and by brief satisfaction surveys of students and faculty. In addition to submitting materials to www.merlot.org, a manuscript will be submitted to a nursing journal and/or conference to disseminate the project.
  
  

• Jeffrey Levy
  Department of Psychology
  
  Two of the most powerful ways to improve learning, retention and the ability to apply information are to organize it in a meaningful way and to emphasize its relevance. A multimedia study aid will be developed to support the advanced Psychology major laboratory course in Learning. It will integrate existing PowerPoint slides and audio files, along with new video links and web sites within an organizational structure based upon the theme of the course (i.e., learning is an adaptive process whereby individuals acquire the ability to predict and, where possible, control environmental events). In addition, new resources will be compiled demonstrating how the adaptive learning process has transformed the human condition. This would highlight differences between currently existing "primitive" and technologically advanced societies as well as key inventions which have created the need for and fueled the information explosion (e.g., the plow, printing press, computer/internet, etc.).
  
  Learning is a fundamental topic covered in other Psychology courses. There is a chapter dedicated to learning in Introduction to Psychology and the basics are usually covered in Developmental Psychology, Personality, Abnormal Psychology, Social Psychology and elsewhere. I would share the multi-media aid with departmental colleagues so that they could take advantage of the resource as they saw fit. 
  
  

• Richard Liddy
  Religious Studies
  
  The aim of this project is to use a gallery tool for images to create a time-line based on the chronological units of my course on Catholicism and Art. This time-line will illustrate the development of architecture and art from the beginnings of Christianity to the present day. The aim will also be to create a repository of images dealing with art and Catholicism, particularly those images clearly illustrating the influence of developing culture and doctrine on the formation of artistic images.
  
  An obvious example would be the images of Mary that proliferated in the Middle Ages and that reflected developing medieval culture and ecclesial doctrine. The archive will be constructed chronologically from the early beginnings of Christianity through the Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, modern and - today - postmodern periods.
  
  

• Marco T. Morazán
  Math & Computer Science
  
  Modern programming languages, like Java and Scheme, are implemented through the use of a virtual machine. Virtual machines mimic the behavior of real hardware machines by executing instructions (usually bytecode), but lack all the low-level hardware details of real machines. The advantages of using virtual machines include security (malicious attacks on virtual machines do not affect hardware), abstraction (it is easier to understand and implement program evaluation algorithms), and design flexibility (virtual machines are easily modified to add new features). Most commercially used virtual machines (e.g. the Java virtual machine), however, are still quite complex and remain outside of what can be introduced in an undergraduate curriculum. The goal of the proposed project is to implement the MT-Scheme virtual machine (MTSVM) using Seton's Hall newly acquired cluster computer and to use this virtual machine in the Spring of 2008 to teach Organization of Programming Languages (CSAS-3113). The MTSVM is a virtual machine being developed at Seton Hall that is specifically targeted for the implementation of a pure subset of the Scheme programming language supported by an intelligent distributed memory. The design of the MTSVM is simple enough that undergraduate students can understand it and use it to implement a subset of the Scheme programming language. In addition, the development of this project will serve as a solid basis for the application of external funding to design and implement an intelligent distributed virtual memory for Scheme.
  
  

• Cherubim Quizon
  Sociology and Anthropology
  
  This project seeks to combine available Web 2.0 classroom technologies as tools for learning about the peoples and cultures of a large culture area, Southeast Asia, by following the cultural and historical trajectory of key textile artifacts that ostensibly belong to a well-defined "tribe" or ethnic group. The challenges of teaching anthropology and sociology students about the complexities of culture has been helped but in some ways, also hindered by the internet. The abundance of high quality information and resources that were once the purview of specialists presents a wealth of research opportunities to undergraduates. At the same time, the internet-savvy generation is not often inclined or equipped to process and learn from primary texts, museum images, archival documents and the like, nor have the opportunity to make connections between large cultural-historical processes and their own lives. Using the texts and disciplinal tools of anthropology, as well as specific teaching resources such as blogs & wikis, public mapping resources (such as Google Maps/Earth) & online interactive catalogs & resources from key museums & libraries, YouTube and other file sharing sites, students will be asked to apply what they learn from readings and lectures towards their own research on a textile artifact. In addition, the series of assignments and activities leading to the final project will increase awareness of responsible ways of using multi media resources that pay attention not only to proper attribution but to improved critical thinking skills as they learn to evaluate both the quality and context of textual and non-textual information.