Show Printable VersionFDIP Fiscal Year 2012 - 2013 Grant Recipients
‘A’ Grants ‘B’ Grants
The following faculty received grant awards from the Faculty Development Initiative Program for Fiscal Year 2012 - 2013.
‘A’ Grants
Abigail Hubbard
C.T. Bauer College of Business ($3,750)
Apple recently announced the release of a new eText initiative powered by a new app in iTunesU for the iPad platform that will enable development of integrated courseware. Traditional online course development has reached a reasonable level of sophistication, but true integration of content, including the use of push/pull technology for timely updates of data and information from external sources, has been elusive.
This project will focus on the development of an MBA level elective on globalization using rich external web-based resources from multiple sources, providing seamless, integrated content for students. A globalization course is a particularly good test subject for this technology because 1) the magnitude of data is enormous, 2) the sources for data and information are extensive and diverse, physically spanning the globe at many levels (supranational organizations, national governments, local governments, NGOs, academic think tanks, etc.), and 3) managing the complexity of the topic is challenging. A seamless, integrated content engine would make content manageable for students
Dennis Kao
Graduate College of Social Work ($3,750)
The goal of the proposed project is to design a hybrid course to train social work students on mapping communities through the use of geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and other technological tools (e.g. Google Earth). GIS provides a set of tools that allow social workers to map and visualize individuals and families within the context of their communities and neighborhoods and therefore, can be useful in informing program evaluation, needs assessment, program planning and development, policy development, and research. The anticipated outcome will be the implementation of a semester-long social work course by the Fall 2013 semester initially as a special topics course and eventually as a permanent macro social work elective.
Samantha Kwan
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences ($3,900)
An FDIP-A grant will be used to restructure to hybrid format SOC3350, the sociology of the body, currently a fully classroom- based course. The new hybrid-delivery course will enhance student learning by providing students with additional opportunities to develop their analytical, communication, and collaboration skills. Web technologies and online teaching strategies will be used to administer course modules that involve discussion boards and dynamic chat rooms, instructor-student video chat sessions, audio-navigated slides, video clips, and online assessment tools. Students will also participate in a collaborative online project.
Jamie Kovach
College of Technology ($4,000)
The aim of this proposal is to describe a project for developing a hybrid version of one course in the Technology Project Management program. This program is one of the fastest growing graduate programs at the University of Houston, and it is now being offered across three campuses (Main, Northwest, and Sugar Land).
The Quality Improvement in Project Management course (a required course in this program) is currently taught in a face-to-face format. Unfortunately, this style of delivery limits the number of sections that can be offered each semester and hinders students_ ability to balance their academic and professional priorities. Transforming this course into a hybrid format will increase access to this course/program, provide a more flexible learning environment that meets the needs of the students served by this program, and enhance student engagement in the learning process.
Erhun Kundakcioglu
College of Engineering ($3,471)
The Department of Industrial Engineering (IE) in the Cullen College of Engineering has been one of the most cost-effective departments at the University of Houston. There are a number of reasons for this remarkable performance, one being the graduate student enrollment. In the past, the attractiveness of the coursework Master of Industrial Engineering (MIE) program for the professional community in Houston had helped increasing the graduate student population immensely. However, the graduate enrollment figures has gone down drastically in the last 3 years, including 46% decrease last year. This is mainly due to the increasing number of professional degree programs in Houston, the last one being Texas A&M's Professional MBA program.
In order to compete with these programs and considering the flexible learning needs of our target audience, there is an undeniable request for online courses at the graduate level. This FDIP grant would enable us to initiate an online graduate course on the extremely popular topic, data mining, with powerful Web 2.0 tools for our post-baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral students. If this project proves successful, further online courses can be developed to offer a certificate program that merges mathematical methods, data mining, and imaging to a wider audience and even to target audiences across the country who have expressed interest. These online courses would also allow us to expand our master's degree with concentration in data mining.
Santhi Masilamani
College of Pharmacy ($4,000)
The passage of the Health Care Reform (HCR) Affordable Care Act has resulted in several innovations, principles of which have not yet been included in the College of Pharmacy curriculum. These disruptive innovations, a newly coined term supported by the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovations (CMMI), have fast tracked the evolution of the health system. New patient care delivery models as well as financial models of sustainability have gained such momentum that practice changes have preceded the evidence research offers.
This momentum coupled with a severe shortage in pharmacy managers and the lack of coursework in the professional pharmacy program have created a high demand for a 2 year post graduate residency with Master of Science (PGY2/MS) degree. Participants in this advanced degree program have requested addition of coursework that explores these evolving concepts in detail and gives them the foundation for research. In addition, the current practicing pharmacist that must respond quickly and effectively has requested formal training in these rapid changing models of practice. To meet this burgeoning need, a high demand hybrid elective course for 6 PGY2/MS students/year that can double as a certificate program for over 100 hospital pharmacy staff will be offered.
Rupa Iyer
College of Technology ($4,000)
The goal of this proposal is to develop a hybrid graduate course in Regulatory Affairs intended for graduate students and professionals in the biotechnology and the life sciences industry. The course will examine the role of all governmental bodies and provide an in-depth coverage of all steps involved in the regulatory approval process for biotechnology _derived products. Regulatory Affairs course will be a unique course offered by the College of Technology and will be built on the existing strong and successful biotechnology undergraduate program. In addition, this course will be useful to students from other colleges including NSM, Business, Engineering and Pharmacy.
The course will be delivered in a hybrid format, in which the online coursework will allow students to work independently and absorb new concepts at their own pace. At the same time, personal contact between classmates and invited guest speakers from the biotech and life sciences industry will provide stimulating discussions of case studies. The feasibility of offering the course via Interactive T.V to provide access to students from multiple campuses and professionals in the greater Houston area will also be considered. Course content will be developed in collaboration with advisers from the biotech industry familiar with regulatory affairs.
Lisa Alastuey
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences ($4,000)
This study aims to enhance an exiting online graduate course in the Department of Health and Human Performance (HHP). I will be testing the effectiveness of implementing social media (Facebook and Twitter) as a learning strategy to increase student participation, motivation, and performance in PEP 6306: Gender and Cultural Issues in Physical Activity and Fitness. If desirable results are found, future courses in HHP may be adapted to include evidenced based technological innovations such as social media to enhance learning outcomes.
The goal of this study is to enhance the content and delivery of a graduate course through the integrated use of two social media mechanisms: Facebook and Twitter. The following course was chosen to use social media: PEP 6306: Gender and Cultural Issues in Physical Activity and Fitness. This class is a multidisciplinary integration of epidemiological, psychological, and cultural approaches to the study of physical activity and fitness levels among diverse ethnic groups and minorities in the United States. The focus of this class will be on examining the impact of gender and cultural beliefs on the physical activity and fitness levels of Hispanic, African American, and White adult and children populations and the development of interventions to promote PA and fitness in these populations. It is my goal to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing social media to increase course participation, discussion, and overall performance in a graduate level online course.
‘B’ Grants
Qianmei Feng
College of Engineering ($15,000)
The purpose of this project is to develop an online program for a new concentration in Public Safety Management (PSM) in the Master's of Industrial Engineering (MIE) degree within the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Houston. The primary focus of the PSM concentration is to provide students with the knowledge and skills required to assume leadership roles in managing emergency situations that arise as a result of man-made and natural disasters. Target audiences for this concentration are the current workforce who are interested in advancing their career and students who are interested in public safety management.
This project includes four key objectives as follows: (1) development of online teaching materials, (2) development of a sophisticated online exam program, (3) development of innovative teaching tools with the use of games and educational video clips, and (4) implementation of social media in online classes. This concentration will be the first engineering program in the U.S. that focuses on public safety management. We believe that having this concentration will provide a unique opportunity for the department to attract a larger number of students from the adult/professional market to the Cullen College of Engineering. We are well prepared to develop this PSM concentration because of our prior experience and training in innovative teaching techniques, and the commitment of our department to create this new concentration in MIE.
Monit Cheung
Graduate College of Social Work ($15,000)
Web-based education with technology integration not only affords an enriched learning environment to students, but it also expands the reach of the UH_s graduate social work program to the larger local and national communities. Because the mission of the Graduate College of Social Work (GCSW) is to promote social justice, through our proposed online degree program, opportunities will be expanded for those who cannot attend traditional classroom settings but would like to attend the GCSW program so that they can establish sustainable and linguistically competent practices with diverse clients and families, particularly with clients of diverse ethnic backgrounds or recent immigrants.
In this project, experienced practitioners will be invited to participate in our online course design, which will also serve as a bridge to recruit others who would like to further their graduate studies at UH. Specifically, a trifold strategy will be implemented by 1) designing four specific online courses, 2) integrating the MSW curriculum with technology-enhanced applications for clinical practice, and 3) providing technical teaching assistance to faculty and teaching staff. The proposed courses will focus on teaching clinical practice with interactive methods through innovative means and aim toward becoming a major part of the new online MSW program.
Thomas Lowder
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences ($15,000)
This project seeks to enhance three presently-offered courses, and add a fourth, to HHP_s graduate program in Strength and Conditioning. Further, these courses will be offered as a stand-alone post-baccalaureate certificate for strength and conditioning coaches and personal trainers seeking to enhance their knowledge base in the field. By offering such a certificate in this specialized area, the University of Houston will be the first university in the country to offer such courses to specialists working in the field who wish to update their knowledge.
This will also serve as a model for continuing education credits for individuals who are required to do so in order to maintain their accreditation in the field, such as is required by the National Strength and Conditioning Association. These courses, which are presently offered online, will be updated with video demonstrations and content knowledge from practicing strength and conditioning coaches as well as from UH research scientists so that these courses will have content consisting of cutting-edge knowledge and research. It is anticipated that through the offering of the online post-baccalaureate certificate, UH will enroll many individuals worldwide, increasing UH’s presence and enrollment.
Xiaojing Yuan
College of Technology ($15,000)
The aim of this proposal is to renovate existing graduate courses using innovative instructional delivery tools and methods to put fundamentals of computer network courses online, thus improving graduate students enrollment, while maintaining the high quality of students learning and student retention in the Networking and Communication Master and Certification programs. The proposed project targets working professionals across the United States who would like to take courses while working and need the flexibility to access instructional material from anywhere at any time.
Courses will be renovated using novel delivery technologies such as Articulate e-learning toolset, Blackboard LEARN learning management system (LMS), and Wimba collaboration toolset. The success of the project not only will help serving students populations at regional campuses, but also can enable multiple certification programs and increase student enrollment from Texas and across the nation. The courses that will be affected in the project are ELET 6312 Network Management, ELET 6315 Sensor Networks, ELET 6316 Network Routing Algorithms and Protocols, and ELET 6318 Analysis of Data Networks. These are computer network fundamentals and can be easily offered in a bundle as a graduate certificate program.
Norma Olvera
College of Education ($15,000)
An adequate supply of well-prepared health professionals is essential to build up an effective health system in America. The unmet workforce need for trained health educators is widely recognized nationally, statewide and regionally as critical. Unmet health workforce needs will only increase as health care needs shift to prevention, community health expands, and exiting health practitioners retire. Thus, there is a significant need for well-prepared health educator leaders whose efforts can ultimately improve the health needs of the US population, particularly, those from traditionally underrepresented groups (such as minorities, women, children, and elderly).
The purpose of this project is to develop and implement a high-quality online master’s degree program in Health Education that will prepare the next generation of health educators. The FDIP funds would be used to establish the infrastructure for the online graduate program, acquire the necessary technologies, and provide technology training for faculty and students in the program. In addition, we expect the online program to extend the Health Education Program’s long-standing success in attracting students from minority groups. In fact, the majority of our master’s degree recipients are women and students of color.
Sharon Bode
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences ($11,800)
Post-bac students comprise nearly 10% of the ~600 nutrition majors. Most are full or part-time employed and unable to attend UH on a full time basis. Provision of quality learning experiences in a format that does not require full-time face to face teaching format allows greater flexibility and will promote program completion in a shorter time-frame. Promote clinical skills through increasingly complex medical patient interactions for assessment, evaluation, and counseling.
Conversion of a three course sequence building a learning experience that promotes critical thinking through interactive simulations at an increasingly complex set of medical conditions. Enhancement of two additional courses that are currently in a hybrid format. Purpose is to provide an opportunity for real-life simulation and practice to a cohort of students who otherwise have no opportunity to experience first-hand.
If you have any questions about this program, please contact Dr. Marshall Schott at 832-842-4664 or at mschott@mail.uh.edu or Tammy Hoskings 832-842-2141 thoskings@uh.edu.