Instructional Development Grants

Office of the Provost

ETSU’s instructional development grants support innovative teaching projects.  Explore this website and learn more about the exciting work IDG grant recipients are doing.  We hope their projects spark new ideas about your own teaching. 

  • FY 2024/25 GRANT SUMMARIES

    Mary Axelrad

    Department of Family Medicine
    Longitudinal Nutrition Curriculum for Family Medicine Residents

    I cooked an example of the DASH diet – a variation of the Mediterranean Diet with low salt content. This diet is used to treat high blood pressure and prevent cardiovascular disease. We had only positive feedback from our residents. The menu, recipes, detailed nutrition information, and evidence-based information on treating hypertension with dietary and lifestyle changes was provided to each student as well.  Teaching by cooking/eating instead of a lecture is certainly my preferred way to teach nutrition.

    Competitions:

    Goal: Experiencing what you are advising patients to do in your own life.

    Our first competition was to see how many days in a 30-day period you can practice Veganism. This was to experience how difficult it can be to make major changes to your diet. Result? No one could do it for even one day! Point made. I’m choosing step counting for the next challenge, as I’d like to give away the giant sweet potato prize from our garden.

  • FY 2021/22 GRANT SUMMARIES

    James Sheffey 

    Department of Biomedical Sciences
    Enhanced Anatomy Laboratory Experience through Technology

    The data indicates that the project was successful in improving visualization of course materials from multiple vantage points in the laboratory.  I don’t think that we have yet appreciated the full impact that will not become evident until the new TRAILS preclinical curriculum is rolled out this Fall.  By improving the laboratory experience at the present time, and even more importantly, as the department and medical school as a whole move into the next phase of our educational approach in a system’s based, integrated curriculum.  It will allow us to be even more innovative in our teaching approaches moving forward, in an already innovative approach to anatomy education. The technology will impact the university as a whole by impacting PT students and planned OT and prosthetics students, as well as medical residents. 

     

    Shuling Yang

    Curriculum & Instruction
    Preparing the Teacher Candidates at ETSU to Build Inclusive Classrooms through the International Peer Partnership

    The project entitled, “Preparing the Teacher Candidates at ETSU to Build Inclusive Classrooms through the International Peer Partnership” was funded by the 2021 IDG. With the generous support, the PI was able to invite a few international students at ETSU to do panel talks with the students enrolled in READ 3300 in both main campus and Sevierville cohort in the fall of 2021. 

  • FY 2020/21 GRANT SUMMARIES

     William Hemphill

    Engineering, Engineering Technology, & Surveying
    Acoustic Guitar Building

    This IDC grant’s $5K funding has allowed the ETSU departments of Engineering,
    Engineering Technology, and Surveying (EETS) and Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country
    Music Studies (BOTCMS)—surely one of the University’s longest-named, two department
    collaborations—to substantially increase the capabilities of a proposed new, lower division
    undergraduate class to introduce the building of acoustic stringed instruments into the
    curricula of the two departments’ programs.



  • FY 2019/20 GRANT SUMMARIES

    Shara Lange
    Media & Communications
    Living Langston: Integrating Community-based, Interactive Documentary Production into Foundational Video Production Courses

    Living Langston is a collection of classes, media project assignments, and network of relationships that 
    draws from various diverse praxis and methodologies.
    In the fall 2019 and spring 2020 semesters, 28 students learned video production while creating media about Johnson City’s first African American high school, Langston High School. Langston High School was created for black students in the segregated south pre-1954, but after de-segregation, the facility sank into disrepair. A board of community members and Langston alumni worked for years to raise money to renovate what remains of the school. The renovated former gymnasium became a community arts center in fall 2019. This course was a way to honor the significance of the school and mark this next

     

  • FY 2018/19 GRANT SUMMARIES

    Andrew Joyner & William Tollefson
    Geosciences
    Teaching in a Sandbox: Using Augmented Realty to Promote Geospatial Education and Careers

     

    Students in GIS Projects (GEOS 5320) were tasked with building the AR Sandbox and developing instructional materials for multiple advanced AR Sandbox modules.  After building was complete, they took the AR Sandbox to several schools and events within our area to teach a range of students about physical geosciences and GIS via the hands-on AR Sandbox functions. This type of project has obvious instructional innovations and benefits, including those to graduate students who were given the responsibility to start and finish a project with clearly defined deliverables to multiple stakeholders (i.e., the K-12 teachers, university lab instructors, etc.).  The AR Sandbox also provided the Department of Geosciences with an incredible K-12 outreach tool, providing insight into an exciting career path and opportunities at ETSU that are less well-known. Between the prototype AR Sandbox and this final, mobile AR Sandbox, over 2,000 children, students, and teachers have used the AR Sandbox so far!

     

    Kelly B. Reath
    Social Work Department
    Talking Head Avatar

    The Instructional Development Grant was used for software to create an animated avatar resembling the instructor’s physical appearance.  The avatar, Talking Head, was embedded in a new asynchronous online graduate social work course - Human Behavior in the Macro Social Environment.  Students were surveyed with the purpose of understanding the impact of avatar design animation on establishing social presence of an instructor in a virtual eLearning environment.  While responses indicated a lack of consensus regarding avatar design establishing instructor social presence, the use of humor associated with avatar behavior received positive feedback.  Additional software was purchased to create animated Whiteboard lectures.  The Talking Head Avatar and Whiteboard Animation Short Lecture have been incorporated into this instructor’s other online courses as a means for delivering course content.    

     talking avatar

     

PREVIOUS GRANT RECIPIENTS

  • FY2022/23

     

     

     

    Michael Bourassa

    Rehab Science

    Inclusion of pulmonary function assessment and intervention as part of physical therapy education

     

    Sage Perrott
    Art & Design

    Provisional Press Bringing Letterpress Printing to ETSU students

    Ashana Puri

    Pharmaceutical Sciences

    Demo Dose Simulated  Medications

    Mickey White
    Counseling and Human Services

    Sandtray Supervision for Counselors in Training

     

     

  • FY2021/22

    Meredith Ginley

    Psychology

    Improving Trainingin Psychological Assessment for Clinical Psychology Doctoral Students

    Shara Lange

    Media and Communication

    Reality Television Production in the Classroom

    James Sheffy

    Biomedical Sciences

    Enhanced Anatomy Laboratory Experience through Technology

    Shuling Yang
    Curriculum & Instruction

    Preparing the Teacher Candidates at ETSU to Build Inclusove Classrooms through the Intermational Peer Partnership

  • FY 2020/21

     

     

    Travis Clamon
    Sherrod Library

     


    Addressing Textbooks Affordability with Institutional Licensed Electronic Textbooks

    William Hemphill
    Engineering, Engineering Technology, & Surveying

     


    Acoustic Guitar Building

    Phyllis Thompson
    Literature & Language/Women's Studies

    Trauma-Informed Strategies for Teaching and Learning Conference

    Mohammad Moin Uddin
    Engineering, Engineering Technology and Surveying

     

    Closing Learning Gaps in Statics Using Peer Assisted Learning and Hands-on-Learning Experiences

     

  • FY 2019/20

     

    Julia Bernard, Lisa Dunkley, & Deidra Rogers
    Counseling and Human Services

    Developing a Minor in Trama

    Allison Bourassa
    Physical Therapy

    Utilization of infrared video goggles for teaching the assessment and management of vestibular disorders to student physical therapists

    Aruna Kilaru & Cerrone Foster
    Biological Sciences

    Enhancing research experiences in freshman biology labs by incorporating project-based modern biology modules

    Shara Lange
    Media & Communication

    LIVING LANGSTON: Integrating Community-based, Interactive Documentary Production into Foundational Video Production Courses

     

  • FY 2018/19

     

    Michael Bourassa
    Physical Therapy

    Enhancement of Student Physical Therapy Clinical Skill Development through Ultrasound Imaging

    Rachel Walden
    Department of Learning Resources

    Virtual Reality Anatomy Education

    Andrew Joyner & William Tollefson
    Geosciences

    Teaching in a Sandbox: Using Augmented Realty to Promote Geospatial Education and Careers

    Kelly Reath
    Social Work

    Developing "Fast Draw" Whiteboard Animation Shorts for Online Instruction