Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Congratulations to our 2022 SoTL Grantees!
Friday, March 25, 2022
The CTE is excited to announce our inaugural SoTL Grant recipients: congratulations to Haerin Beller, Diana Franco Duran, Diane Hoffman, and Gary Koenig! In total, $17,200 in funding was awarded to help faculty advance their SoTL collaboration, dissemination, or research project. We invite you to read more about our grantees below. The SoTL Grants program is designed to support evidence-based research that contributes new knowledge related to teaching and learning at UVA. Thank you to all our applicants!
We would also like to thank our proposal reviewers for their time and service: Stefen Beeler-Duden, Psychology Graduate Student; Elizabeth Dickens, CTE Assistant Director of Curriculum Development; Sara Hallowell, Associate Professor of Nursing; Hui Ma, Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics; and Ann Reimers, Assistant Professor in Engineering & Society and Mechanical & Aerospace, and CTE Faculty Fellow.
Diane Hoffman
Associate Professor, Department of Leadership, Foundations and Policy in the School of Education and Human Development
Grant Type: SoTL Dissemination Grant
Funding Awarded: $3,000
Project Title: Interactional Contexts and Equitable Learning Outcomes: A Comparison of Student Learning in Online vs. Face-to-Face Anthropology of Education Courses
Abstract: The online learning context is a new and developing tool, the impact of which we don’t fully understand. Our ongoing SoTL project considers the question, how does student learning about anthropological perspectives differ in the online and face-to-face versions of an anthropology of education course? Does one course format appear to be more effective in terms of student acquisition of anthropological perspectives, and if so, why is that the case? We explore learning through the lens of interaction across these different learning modalities, considering how students interact with learning materials, ideas, their fellow students, and the course instructor in both face-to-face and virtual spaces. We hypothesize that these interactional dimensions may be directly related to questions of equity. We have already completed a content analysis of 236 reflection essays and reported our findings in a conference paper delivered at the American Anthropological Association in November 2021. We found that some forms of interaction with and processing of course material occur more often in face-to-face courses and others in online courses; and, further, these differences in interaction appear to be associated with differences in student acquisition of anthropological ideas. This proposal seeks to focus on the question of equity in student learning by extending our analysis to include online course discussion threads and quantitative data on student grades and demographics. Our goal is to determine how each instructional modality may support or impede aspects of the interactional context that may be directly related to questions of equitable outcomes.
Gary Koenig
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering
Grant Type: SoTL Dissemination Grant
Funding Awarded: $3,000
Project Title: Impact of Credit/No Credit Option on Student Learning Outcomes in a Statistics Course
Abstract: This SoTL research project is investigating the change in test outcomes in a statistics course for students who choose credit/no credit compared to those who choose to be graded when offered the option in the middle of the semester. This was a unique situation that arose during the Fall 2020 semester. Analysis has been and will be conducted on student test data from that course cohort, as well as analysis of prior student cohorts which establishes predictive correlations for expected student outcomes in the course. This grant will support dissemination of the results of the research, both at a national conference (American Society of Engineering Education) via presentation and a conference paper. Funds will also be used to write a full manuscript for submission to a peer reviewed journal. This research will be disseminated to further progress in the area of student motivation with relation to grading systems and their impacts on student learning, done more specifically in the context of a probability and statistics course.
Haerin Beller
Assistant Professor, Department of Urology in the School of Medicine
Grant Type: SoTL Collaboration Grant
Funding Awarded: $5,000
Project Title: Does goal-oriented structured mentorship in urologic surgery training improve trainee wellness?
Abstract: Surgical skill training in urologic surgery is largely an apprenticeship model with large variation on what cases residents are assigned and what skills they learn in the operating room. To provide structure, we propose implementing a coaching program in which urology residents meet with a coach monthly to set three skill-based goals to learn in three-month rotations. We hypothesize that this program will (1) allow residents to improve their learning efficiency, (2) provide a mechanism for teaching faculty to improve their skills-based teaching, and (3) improve resident perception of faculty support and job satisfaction. We will seek to assess the effect of rotation-based monthly resident-led, goal-based coaching on urologic resident education. Pre- and post-intervention surveys will be administered to assess the resident’s perceived faculty support, job satisfaction, and burnout. Qualitative data regarding the experience will also be obtained from the residents and faculty in structured exit interviews.
Diana Franco Duran
Assistant Professor, Academic General Faculty, Teaching Track, Department of Engineering Systems and Environment in the School of Engineering
Grant Type: SoTL Research Grant
Funding Awarded: $5,000
Project Title: The Case Study Method as a tool to gain practical experience and learn specific skills in Construction
Abstract: To implement the case study method in Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) education while leveraging its potential to meet the construction industry's needs, I launched a new course called "Construction Industry Workshop" in Fall 2021. This case study-based course is part of the new CEM track in UVA's Civil Engineering undergraduate program. During my first year in the SoTL Scholars program, I collected artifacts of this class to examine the contributions of the case study method and the systematic inclusion of the cases' real actors to CEM education in terms of developing and improving students' project management skills. Based on the lessons learned from the class's first delivery, some improvements will be made to the class structure and cases' content to continue collecting data in the Fall 2022 iteration of the course.
Grant Type: SoTL Dissemination Grant
Funding Awarded: $1,200
Project Title: Using the Case Study Method as a tool to improve students' Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) skills
Abstract: The purpose of my current SoTL project is to understand how the case study method can support the development and improvement of students’ project management skills in CEM education. Data for this project was collected in Fall 2021. A conference abstract was submitted and has been accepted to the 2022 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition that will be held in Minneapolis, MN, on June 26. At present, the data collected in Fall 2021 must be analyzed to report the outcomes in a journal paper. Disseminating the experience and lessons learned from the co-development and co-teaching of the CEM case study-based course with construction industry partners will contribute to the engineering education literature. This research seeks to show how such partnerships can harness the case study method to benefit both CEM students and the construction industry, since instructors are generally not direct practitioners.