Announcements

January 29, 2024

Announcing Innovation Grant Awards for 2024

Announcing the Educational IT Innovation Grant Awards for 2024 

The Educational IT Committee, a part of the University of Rochester's IT Governance structure, promotes the use of technologies to support instructional innovation throughout the University of Rochester. By encouraging and supporting faculty and staff efforts in this area we hope to enhance learner experiences and outcomes. We also seek opportunities that lead to the broad applicability of educational IT innovations across multiple schools in order to maximize the potential impact.

To support these aims, our Innovation Grant program provides funding through a proposal process to support faculty and staff in adopting new technologies to their teaching. This program also includes mentorship, support, and connection to existing resources in the institution through the committee. We are excited to announce the grant awards for 2024.

AI READE (AI REsearch And DEvelopment): A pilot project for integrating generative AI Tools in Business, Education, and Nursing at the University of Rochester – In the swiftly advancing field of artificial intelligence (AI), the profound impact of Generative (Gen) AI tools on higher education is unmistakably clear. However, a recent study by Tyton Partners (2023) notes that nearly half of college students use a GenAI tool, while only 22% of faculty have adopted these technologies into their own practice. This is a quintessential moment for establishing cross-disciplinary working groups that pilot and evaluate AI tools to support the University community in feeling more comfortable and confident in GenAI technologies. Our proposal centers on two main goals: 1) advancing faculty and student knowledge and use of GenAI and 2) establishing a working group to pilot emerging GenAI multimodal and plugin capabilities that have the potential to significantly benefit course content creation and assessment and feedback to students.

Digital Professional Excellence Badges – This project will evaluate and implement a digital badging tool for the University. It will start with two schools, the Warner School of Education and the School of Nursing. In the Warner School of Education, this project will impact the six pathways to earn a micro-credential and digital professional excellence badge. Specifically, the micro-credentials are Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Leading Organizational Innovations, Decision Making with Data, Professional Learning, Policy and Social Change, and Online Learning. Each micro-credential and associated badge require the completion of 9-credits in the Warner School with some choice within each program. In the School of Nursing the pilot would focus on both student learning and faculty development. The Center for Lifelong Learning (CLL) would like to offer badging for the Care Manager Education Program (NSG084.Continuous.252525) The use of micro-credentials and an associated digital badge would allow students to connect their achievement to their social media, such as LinkedIn profiles to display their accomplishments. Additionally, the School of Nursing would like to offer micro-credentials for completion of different faculty development activities done through Blackboard that can also be linked to social media profiles, such as LinkedIn to display their accomplishments. The pilot would include 2 tracks of faculty development, one for new faculty and Master’s in Nursing Education Students (2 courses) and one for new and current faculty and Master’s in Nursing Education Students (4 courses)