Past Project Descriptions

2006 Vision Awards

"Readiness Assurance Technology" for Team-Based Learning

Faculty Members: Daniel H. Robinson

Department: Educational Psychology

Project Description: Team-based learning (TBL) is a well-documented instructional strategy whose popularity is spreading across the nation. At the college level, it has been shown to generate greater student engagement, achievement and even attendance across many disciplines. This project will lead to the development of a system that will support the use of Readiness Assurance Testing (RAT) in a team-based learning environment. The online system will support the creation and administration of individual tests followed by immediately by a team test and manage the scoring and relationships between the two.

Standardized Patient Methodology to Enhance Teacher Training in Working with Parents

Faculty Members: Cindy Carlson

Department: Educational Psychology

Project Description: Beginning teachers cite relationships with parents as their greatest source of stress and anxiety, and find working with the families of their students to be more challenging than getting sufficient resources, maintaining order and discipline in the classroom, preparing students for testing, or getting guidance and support. The purpose of this Vision Award will be the development of a prototype for training in relationship building communication skills with parents. Two unique aspects of the project include the use of standardized patient methodology in the development of the prototype and the use of motivational interviewing as the basis of skill development.

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Reading Tutorials through Video Cases

Faculty Members: James Hoffman and Beth Maloch

Department: Curriculum and Instruction

Project Description: The goal of this project is to develop a set of video cases to complement the Longhorn Tutoring Handbook used in the Reading Specialization/Concentration program. Two short video cases will illustrate each of the major components of the handbook. The video clips will be annotated with comments from the instructors and will include a running transcript of the interactions between teacher and student. The video cases will be implemented within a website that will support threaded discussion between instructors and students.

Using PDAs for Fitness Testing

Faculty Members: Phil Stanforth

Department: Kinesiology and Health Education

Project Description: About ninety students each year learn to conduct fitness evaluations as part of KIN 352K Diagnosis and Fitness. The goal of this project is to develop a system for using PDAs to conduct Posture and Movement screens. These screens have traditionally been conducted using pencil and paper. Recording this data directly to a PDA and then uploading it to a database will eliminate recording errors and allow advanced processing of the data.