ITGP Awards: Spring, 2006

Online Japanese Character (Kanji) Database
Principal Investigator William Burton
Department Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures
School/College College of Arts and Sciences
Investigators Sarah Frederick, Mariko Itoh Henstock
Project Description 
The acquisition of written Japanese — a language comprised of thousands of Japanese- Chinese characters (kanji), each with at least two different pronunciations — presents an incredible challenge to the organizational and memorization skills of the student and teacher alike. The object of this project is to make available through web page access an interactive database designed to aid in the identification and drilling of the 1850 characters used in everyday written Japanese. In addition, this program will serve as a method for instructors to create and distribute a variety of reading and writing exercises and drills for their students.

 
VisionU: Visualizing Science in Our Non-major Undergraduates
Principal Investigator Samuel Hammer and Karina Baum
Department Division of Natural Science
School/College College of General Studies
Project Description 
Visualization is key to biological understanding but challenging for non-science majors. Students experience disparity among images encountered in lecture, texts, and exams. Textbook illustrations and photomicrographs are adequate, but an approach that emphasizes student participation in image-making may better meet non-majors' conceptual needs. We will help our students develop visually integrated course material using handheld digital microscopes that link directly to computers. Our goal is to encourage students to actively problem solve, and to develop multiple representations of the scientific concepts we teach. Students will participate in building a still- and video- image library that we will publish on a Web-based "bioblog."

 
The Diagnosis of Major Depression in Patients, an Instructional Project for Medical Students
Principal Investigator Douglas Hughes
Department Department of Psychiatry
School/College School of Medicine
Investigators John Wiecha, Gail March, Brian Perreault, Wayne LaMorte
Project Description 
Teaching medical students to recognize depression in a patient is challenging as the symptoms are often based on subtle human emotions. Recognizing and treating patients with depression is a primary national concern due to the fact that only 38% of depressed patients are given follow-up appointments by physicians, significantly below other medical illnesses. The purpose of this instructional depression project is to develop a website with instructional material on diagnosing depression in patients, streaming videos of interviews with depressed patients, and testing with factual DSM-IV diagnosing material and a nationally recognized depression scale. The instructional depression project will span 12 months and will be evaluated on its effectiveness.

 
Development of Instructional Materials on Clinical Characteristics of Health Conditions Encountered in Occupational Therapy Practice
Principal Investigator Nancy Lowenstein
Department Department of Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Counseling
School/College Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Investigators Wendy Coster, Karen Jacobs, Susan Berger
Project Description 
This project addresses a need identified by occupational therapy faculty for alternative instructional methods for basic content related to medical, psychiatric and developmental conditions that are not taught in the curriculum due to space and time. Information on these conditions does not change significantly from year to year; therefore it is not a good use of faculty time to lecture on this content. Therefore, we propose to develop a DVD instructional program to teach students about specific health conditions and diagnoses through self-paced learning.

 
Using Video Technology to Develop Expertise as a Literacy Specialist: Critiquing and Improving Intervention Provided to Struggling Readers
Principal Investigator Jeanne Paratore
Department Department of Literacy & Language, Counseling & Development
School/College School of Education
Investigators Mary Matthews, Roselmina Indrisano, Susan Dougherty
Project Description 
Last summer, the Reading and Writing Clinic in the School of Education was revitalized, moving to a newly refurbished space and enrolling a new cohort of graduate students to work with Boston-area children in grades 1-5 who struggle in reading and writing. The purchase of digital video and audio recording equipment for use in the Reading and Writing Clinic would greatly enhance graduate students' progress toward becoming experts in reading instruction and will help to ensure that they graduate as Specialist Teachers of Reading of the very highest quality. Video recordings of one-on-one teaching sessions will be used to critique (and subsequently improve) teaching behaviors. In addition, video cases created from the raw footage collected in the Reading and Writing Clinic will be used as examples of exemplary practice in the introductory Teaching Reading courses taken by approximately 75 undergraduate and 25 graduate students each year.

 
Global Christianity and Mission Interactive Data Base
Principal Investigator Dana Robert
School/College School of Theology
Investigators Jack Ammerman, Septemmy Lakawa
Project Description 
In order to provide essential materials for required masters' and doctoral courses in the history of Christianity as a cross-cultural movement, we propose to scan 130 rare public domain texts related to the study of Christian missionary outreach and Christianity as a global movement. These documents will be stored on the Theology Library's digital document server and will be publicly available through a Web interface. The Theology Library's wiki server will provide the infrastructure to facilitate the collaborative development of readers' guides and author biographies for classroom use.

 
iDesign: Podcasting Capstone Senior Design
Principal Investigator Michael Ruane
Department Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
School/College College of Engineering
Investigators Babak Kia, Ron Knepper, Tom Little, Alan Pisano, Aaron Caine, Jeff Albro, Dan Berkovitch
Project Description 
Instruction in Capstone Senior Design initially mixes lectures with team activities. Once in the design lab, design skill tutorials and team design reviews assist students. Students develop lifelong learning habits with considerable autonomy. Making class design information more accessible at the students' convenience should improve their individual and team performance. This project will assemble the recording and editing technology to convert course materials to podcast format. We will distribute podcasts using iTunes U, a free Apple iTunes service. We will record class activities, add visuals and exercises, and post them with links through our existing CourseInfo/Blackboard class Web site.

 
Global Health Course Modules Project
Principal Investigator Suzanne Sarfaty
Department Office of Student Affairs
School/College School of Medicine
Investigators Tom Hall, Gerald Keusch, Wayne LaMorte, Ben DeWinter, Jon Simon
Project Description 
Each year a substantial number of Boston University undergraduate, medical and public health students travel internationally to participate in global health activities. These activities range from clinical electives to public health and community service projects in hospitals, clinics, and rural villages. Preparation, education and mentoring of our students participating in these international activities is variable and limited by a number of factors, not the least of which is faculty available to educate and orient students at their variable times of departure. This proposal describes the development of a set of interactive, case- based teaching modules that would accomplish three goals: 1) provide a "how to" series of mentoring modules to assist students in their initial planning stages of a global health experience, 2) develop a set of mandatory core competencies for any student planning to work internationally, and 3) provide a resource for asynchronous, self- paced education. Upon completion of the core competency modules, students would receive certification prior to departure. This project would serve to place Boston University at the forefront of the global health education movement by filling a need for which there is currently no good solution.

 

Document last updated 5/19/2006