You are here:
Past Grant Recipients
2022-23 Academic Year
Mary Morrison – Moodle Ambassador
Project Summary: Expand and explore Safe Exam Browser functionality as well as dive deeper into a variety of Moodle Quiz question types.
Project Results: Mary and the ITS department successfully “beefed up” the Safe Exam Browser usage and function. We went through a few rounds of having students “break” the purpose of the Lock Down browser, but got it to a point where the students were no longer able to break out of it. Mary presented her work in the “Teaching Effectiveness Remove Education and LITT” session held on April 13, 2023.
Allison Saunders – VR Innovator
Project Summary: View and analyze protein structures using PyMOL software and low-cost VR headsets (with smartphones). Opportunity for a more immersive experience by expanding the project to use Pepblock Builder VR software and a VR headset. This software is has a gamified approach to protein structure education. "Gaming-Based Bio-Edutainment"
Project Results: Allison and students explored using the low-cost VR headsets to view and analyze protein structures using “Protein VR” from the PITT Durrant Lab. The students she worked with indicated the sensation of using them caused them to feel “motion sick.” She found that interacting with the protein structures on an iPad (without a headset) was a superior learning experience. Allison and the ITS department explored the “immersive experience” VR game (“PROteinVR”) to view and analyze protein structures but found the educational resource was not fully formed. It was glitchy to a point that it was unusable as an educational resource.
2020-21 Abstracts
Michael Heyes, Ph.D. – Religion Department
Email: heyes@lycoming.edu
Use timeline software (like Tiki-Toki.com) to create visual representation between dates and events on timelines to give students a better grasp of the relationships between historical events and build greater mental maps of dated material. Embedding timelines within websites would make them accessible to students both inside and outside of the classroom. Having them on the Lycoming College Religion Department website may boost traffic and interest in the program.
Allison Saunders, Ph.D. – Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Email: saundersa@lycoming.edu
Use Nearpod to promote active learning which will engage students, reinforce learning materials, and create interactive lectures. Some features planned to be explored include the ‘Collaborate,’ ‘Matching,’ ‘Fill in the Blank,’ and ‘Memory Test’ activities. The upgraded version of Nearpod will allow students to access activities outside of class, accommodates larger class sizes, and integrates with PowerPoint to have a more seamless experience between the lecture materials and activities.
Erin McCutcheon, Ph.D. – Art Department
Email: mccutcheon@lycoming.edu
Use Virtual Reality (VR) as a way to bring students closer to artworks and cultural sites around the world from the Neolithic era to the present day. Seeing art in person provides perspectives and experiences that cannot be conveyed from studying a textbook or slides. VR also opens up the possibility to experience art when travel is restricted or locations are outside the bounds of physical visits.
John Capo – Business Department
Email: capo@lycoming.edu
Develop a course to create a Brand Storytelling video for a real-world brand, company, or organization. Brand Storytelling uses a narrative to connect a brand to customers, with a focus on linking what the brand stands for to the values it shares with its customers. This course would walk a student through the process from understanding the foundational concepts of advertising, marketing, and public relations to the creation and execution of a 3-5 minute video. The Brand Storytelling videos will be shared with their classmates and broader college community to receive feedback in a simulated “focus group” format.
2019 Abstracts
Courtney Dexter
Email: dexter@lycoming.edu
Experimenting with the use of the Vosaic software platform to enhance video reflection and analysis for pre-service teachers and their develop of explicit instruction methods. Students in SPED 320 develop and deliver a series of explicit instruction lesson simulations, and use thorough video reflection and analysis procedures to monitor their progress.
Seth Goodman
Email: goodman@lycoming.edu
Introducing a digital component to the painting program using Sculptris and ZBrush software. ZBrush is an industry standard 3D modeling program that is used to invent volumetric forms that can be used in animation or still images.
Mica Kurtz
Email: kurtz@lycoming.edu
Exploring the use of Socrative for interactive feedback and assessment in his Economics classes to improve student engagement.
2018 Abstracts
Mike Heyes
Email: heyes@lycoming.edu
Measuring the effectiveness of instruction both in realtime and through collaboration, and adapting instruction in realtime.
Andrew Stafford and Lauri Rintelman
Email: stafford@lycoming.edu | rintelman@lycoming.edu
Moving from exposure to the language by sound clip to exposure to the culture in an immersive experience.
Megan Andrews
Email: andrews@lycoming.edu
Using clicker apps and related smartphone technology to foster engagement and enhance instruction in Composition, especially of grammar.
Chris Reed
Email: reed@lycoming.edu
Using FlipGrid to differentiate classes and provide ability to do student check in.
Pat Coyle
Email: coyle@lycoming.edu
Research question: Does using the "live lessons" format of interactive presentation on NearPod increase comprehension of academic articles?
Sample: Students registered in separate sections of BUS 244. Section A (n=20) and section B (n=21) will combine for a total sample of N = 41.
Design: Pretest-Posttest design with non-equivalent groups.
Procedure: Both classes will be instructed to read an academic article for homework. The article will be the same for both classes. Upon arrival to class, all students will be given a comprehension quiz. To measure learning as comprehensively as possible, the comprehension quiz will include mathematical/logical, verbal, existential, inter-personal, visual, and experiential questions. Correct answers will not be discussed. Followed, each class will have a discussion regarding the article. One class will experience Nearpod, while the other will experience a standard PPT format. The same quiz will be administered after.
Expected Results & Discussion: While it's expected that both classes will improve, it is also expected that comprehension in the section using Nearpod will increase significantly more.
2017 Abstracts
Professor Robert Smith, Biology Department
Email: smithr@lycoming.edu
Professor Robert Smith has been awarded a LITT grant for academic year 17-18 to explore different options for video capture, hosting and streaming. He is exploring several cloud based solutions including the Amazon Cloud and Panopto. His goal is to identify a cost effective, simple procedure that can be used in conjunction with Moodle the college LMS to store and distribute video
Professor Gary Hafer, English Department
Email: hafer@lycoming.edu
Dr. Hafer is using his LITT grant to extend a model first proposed at Harvard to pinpoint difficult parts of the semester for students and provide interactive workshops relying on individual initiative in the classroom setting. He will be redesigning course material and activities to broadcast work students produce in real time using an iPad Pro, the GoodNotes app and Apple TV to show peer to peer work in class
Professor Lynn Estomin, Art Department
Email: estomin@lycoming.edu
Professor Estomin will be using the most current version of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite to redesign course material to take advantage of digital resources to offer real time access to differing levels of tutorials and class resources that will evolve as the software evolves during the semester. Students will be encouraged to investigate concepts that they will be exposed to using the online resources that they might never see in a traditional textbook
Professor Leah Bedrosian Peterson, Film and Video Arts
Email: peterson@lycoming.edu
Professor Peterson will use her LITT grant to introduce upper level students to stop motion animation capture using Dragonframe software. Dragonframe allows students to explore techniques in shooting video that helps filmmakers make realistic stop motion animations.
Professor Georg Grassmueck, Business Department
Email: grassmue@lycoming.edu
Professor Grassmueck will be using tablets to challenge his students to become better and more experiences readers of scholarly works. Using iBooks he will teach students how to identify key textual elements in .pdf documents. Using Apple TV with the iPads he will take advantage of the Apple ecosystem in the classroom to gather student feedback in real-time and to have them learning these new skills in an environment that is rooted in the digital world they have grown up in.
Professor Courtney Dexter, Education Department
Email: dexter@lycoming.edu
Building on work already underway in the Education Department, Dr. Dexter will be using the Swivl video system to enhance student assessment opportunities and create more detailed feedback and guidance with time stamped feedback. Using this feedback she will have the students set goals and measure progress in a more quantitative way better preparing them for future success.
2016 Abstracts
Dr. Elizabeth Moorhouse, Department of Economics
Email: moorhouse@lycoming.edu
Dr. Moorhouse created demonstration videos that students can access online and on demand to enhance the classroom experience in her Principles of Macroeconomics course.
Dr. Holly Bendorf, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Email: bendorf@lycoming.edu
Dr. Bendorf created demonstration videos and used Moodle based quizzing so that students could access online and on demand video based resources to better learn the core concepts of Organic Chemistry.
Dr. Rachel Hickoff-Cresko, Department of Education
Email: hickoff@lycoming.edu
Dr. Hickoff-Cresko used the Swivel Robot and an iPad to record presentations and demonstrations of her students work. She then stored and shared the recordings so they are accessible to students to use for reflection and self-critique.
Dr. Sarah Holstein, Department of Psychology
Email: holstein@lycoming.edu
Dr. Holstein used Microsoft Sway and an interactive wiki-based platform in her Drugs, Behavior and Society course. These pages encouraged greater engagement, participation and learning across several sections of the course creating a shared repository for future students to build on.
2015 Abstracts
Heather M. Demshock, Assistant Professor of Accounting
Email: demshock@lycoming.edu
For my Individual Taxation course, I experimented with Doceri for the iPad. My LITT grant supported three goals: 1) to wirelessly present lessons using the screen casting app to enhance ability to move around the classroom and detach myself from the lecture podium, 2) to integrate tax forms and tax research into my lectures in a more cohesive manner, and 3) have the ability to annotate on tax forms/slides and use the whiteboard feature in Doceri.
View Presentation.
Georg Grassmueck, Associate Professor of Business
Email: grassmue@lycoming.edu
I used iPads as e-readers during class to teach students to be more critical readers by using the iPad’s highlighting options to teach students to identify key textual elements. Student learned to accurately identify key points and better connect those to the authors’ arguments, allowing students to more effectively understand and articulate what they’ve learned from the reading.
View Presentation.
Amanda Gunderson, Assistant Professor of Music
Email: kelley@lycoming.edu
I incorporated technology into my introductory psychology class in a variety of ways. I embedded videos into lectures, employed interactive activities online and with iPads, and asked students to utilize simulations, videos, and other exercises on a website connected to their textbook. Students seem to enjoy the interactive and engaging activities as they provide a welcome respite from lecture and allow students to apply information in a more concrete manner. Some unintended outcomes included the cost and computer compatibility issues associated with accessing the textbook-connected site.
View Presentation.
Lauri Kremer, Associate Professor of Accounting
Email: kremer@lycoming.edu
My LITT grant is intended to be used in my ACCT 442 – Corporate Income Tax class. My tools for this grant include use of Doceri and the iPad. My goals for this grant are as follows: 1. Integration of tax forms and tax research into the classroom setting, 2. Project tax forms from the IRS website while demonstrating the complexity of how information from tax forms and schedules flows onto the 1120 & 1120S 3. Enhance movement among the students while they are working during the question and answer period of class.
View Presentation.
Amy Rogers, Associate Professor of Education
Email: rogersa@lycoming.edu
The goal of the project was for students to use iPads to enhance the cultural experience of a travel course to Ireland. Prior to embarking for 10 days in Ireland, students first created a Personal Identity project by creating an iMovie Trailer memoir of their life. Topic outline, storyboards, sound, photos, and video clips were required to help the students familiarize themselves with making an iMovie before we traveled to Ireland. Students also completed IRB proposals on their research topics in order to use the research for future presentations. During our trip to Ireland, the students documented their entire journey using the iPad to research an aspect of Irish culture (family, gender, race, migration, immigration, history, politics, contemporary Ireland). The students also used the iPads to digitally blog each day of their trip. Students gave summaries of assigned readings, tied the readings to personal identity theory, and used google blog to document and share personal reactions and/or make connections on a personal level with sites visited and people met.
View Presentation.
Laura Seddelmeyer, Assistant Professor of History
Email: seddelmeyer@lycoming.edu
My project involves the incorporation of TurningPoint clickers into my Western Civilization survey sections with the purpose of encouraging more student engagement in the course. The technology allows me to create multiple choice map and reading quizzes, include slides within the lecture as another avenue of participation, and incorporate questions that encourage discussion. Because students will register their clickers, the information is collected and used as a grading resource for participation and quizzes. The TurningPoint software also allows me to create games where students can be divided into teams and compete in a Jeopardy! – style review session.
View Presentation.
Sarah Silkey, Associate Professor of History
Email: silkey@lycoming.edu
For my project, I examined techniques for producing online tutorials to teach Turabian/Chicago Manual of Style citation format. Breaking down the components of citation instruction, I determined that effective online instruction would require three separate techniques: a video tutorial to introduce the theory of the Turabian system, traditional lecture capture to review Microsoft Word formatting techniques, and a Moodle quiz to provide citation review practice. By moving citation instruction out of the classroom, I anticipate saving at least two hours of classroom instruction time per class per semester.
View Presentation.
Howard Tran, Associate Professor of Art
Email: tran@lycoming.edu
I will incorporate 3-D printing as one process in my Sculpture I class. Students will learn to create 3-D forms on Invent and Sculpt software and print their designs on a Cube 3-D printer.
View Presentation.
Robin Van Auken, Instructor of Communications, Archaeology
Email: vanauken@lycoming.edu
Going Google: Integrating Google Apps into the College Curriculum. I incorporated free, web-based Google applications into my classes, maintaining my syllabus in Google Documents (word processor), updating my grade book and attendance record in Google Sheets (spreadsheet), and using Google Calendar and Email to coordinate assignment due dates. Students used Google Docs with formal writing assignments, collaborating in real time and using the editing/revision history features to improve writing. Students also used Google Blogs for low-stakes journal writing assignments. I also compared Google Apps with Office 365 for Education (a suite of Microsoft apps).
View Presentation.
2014 Abstracts
Rachel Hickoff-Cresko, Assistant Professor of Education
Email: hickoff@lycoming.edu
I explored various iPad apps, to use as methods for checking for my students’ understanding before, during, and after class time. Students were able to document their thinking by recording and narrating their work using the Explain Everything app and by responding to short answer, multiple choice, and true/false questions using the Socrative app.
View Presentation.
Kimberlee Josephson, Visiting Instructor of Business
Email: josephson@lycoming.edu
For my International Business course I created a video catalog consisting of my own short lectures and other pertinent videos (news clips, examples/demonstrations, documentary snippets, etc.) which students were required to watch before class. I also reorganized the course to allow for class time to be activity-based (rather than lecture-based) in order to foster a dynamic and interactive learning environment.
View Presentation.
Sue Kelley, Associate Professor of Psychology
Email: kelley@lycoming.edu
I incorporated technology into my introductory psychology class in a variety of ways. I embedded videos into lectures, employed interactive activities online and with iPads, and asked students to utilize simulations, videos, and other exercises on a website connected to their textbook. Students seem to enjoy the interactive and engaging activities as they provide a welcome respite from lecture and allow students to apply information in a more concrete manner. Some unintended outcomes included the cost and computer compatibility issues associated with accessing the textbook-connected site.
View Presentation.
Charles Mahler, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Email: mahler@lycoming.edu
My LITT grant supported three small projects: 1) using a Flipped Classroom approach in Chemistry 333 (videos to cover review material); 2) Annotating diagrams used in Chemistry 330, 331W, and 333 with Doceri and putting the annotations on Moodle for student use; and 3) developing new Spartan computational chemistry software assignments for Chemistry 330, 331W and 333.
View Presentation.
Leslie Meeder, Visiting Instructor of Spanish
Email: meeder@lycoming.edu
Amigos de Skype: a Language and Culture Exchange: I developed a video chat partnership between beginning/intermediate Spanish students at Lycoming College and native Spanish students studying English at Colegio La Salle Manresa. After finding a collaborating teacher in Spain, I set up the parameters for weekly individual chats, and together we matched our students. My Moodle course provides resources and guidelines for the students and an interactive forum where each can upload screenshots and summaries of their chats.
View Presentation.
Mary Morrison, Assistant Professor of Biology
Email: morrison@lycoming.edu
For Introductory Biology, I use TurningPoint clickers for brief quizzes in class. My LITT project helped me to learn how to set up student self-registration of their clickers via Moodle and then export participant lists to the TurningPoint software. I also learned how to do automatic scoring within Turning Point, how to aggregate the results across multiple class sessions to calculate an overall clicker quiz average, and how to import and export clicker quiz results between the TurningPoint software and Moodle gradebook so students can see their performance.
View Presentation.
Jeremy Ramsey, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Email: ramsey@lycoming.edu
The project’s goal was to introduce aspects of the flipped classroom through the use of YouTube videos. By recording myself teaching basic types of problems, I now have class time to engage students in a large lecture course with more challenging material and at the same time get instant feedback on student learning through the use of student response device or clickers.
View Presentation.
Chris Reed, Instructor of Mathematics
Email: reed@lycoming.edu
I created short (2-10 minute) videos where I solved exact problems that I assign as homework in my Math 128 course. I uploaded the videos to YouTube and then I linked (and embedded) the videos on my Moodle course page so that the students could view the video solution at the time the homework was assigned.
View Presentation.
Shanna Wheeler, Assistant Director of the ARC
Email: wheelers@lycoming.edu
In my English Composition course, I experimented with the Moodle workshop feature, which facilitates online peer review sessions. In order to determine the most effective use of this feature, I assigned students to fixed peer review groups and monitored their completion of several workshop modules, each with a different structure and feedback mode.
View Presentation.