2023 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2023 POD Innovation Award went to Lori Mumpower, Kim Chambers, Amy Cicchino, Teha Cooks, Claudia Cornejo Happel, and Chad Rohrbacher from the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Daytona Beach. The title of their innovation project is “Small Teaching, Big Results: Leveraging Department Chairpersons to Improve Teaching and Learning.” 

For their Small Teaching Challenge project, the CTLE encouraged faculty members to adopt evidence-based teaching practices that were easy to implement. To engage a large number of faculty, the CTLE members built on relationships with department chairs and interdepartmental competition. Students rated the teaching practices highly on their end-of-course evaluations, and participating faculty members expressed interest in continuing to use the teaching practices and in repeating the Small Teaching Challenge in the future.

2022 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2022 POD Innovation Award went to Diane Chapman, Maria Gallardo-Williams, Jonathan Holloway, Sunanda Dillon, and Janet Del Pinal from the Office for Faculty Excellence at NC State University. The title of their innovation project is SPARK: Summer Programs – Achieve, Renew, Kindle. 

SPARK is an asynchronous, professional development program that aims to inspire participants as they prepare for the Fall semester. Every summer, the program focuses on a different topic and creates four media packages containing a podcast, a blog post and downloadable resources. In combination with a discussion forum, these packages allow faculty, staff, and graduate students to engage with the content and each other at their leisure. Find out more about this project by visiting https://provost.ncsu.edu/ofe/events-and-programs/nc-state-spark-summer-programs-aspire-renew-kindle/. 

2021 POD Innovation Award Recipient

The 2021 POD Innovation Award went to Lew Ludwig from the Center for Teaching and Learning at Denison University and Benjamin Haywood from the Faculty Development Center at Furman University. The title of their innovation project is The Rubik’s Cube Challenge: An Expert Blindspot Learning Adventure.

For this project, faculty members at both universities were invited to participate in a six-week challenge to learn how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. Along the way they experienced the joys and frustrations that are part of learning and engaged in discussion board prompts and reflections to work through those challenges. The project reminded experts of what it is like to be a novice and equipped them with pedagogical strategies to better support their students’ learning going forward. Find out more about this project by visiting: https://furman.app.box.com/s/9tx10j9ase6q7lhqp12d1mc2yf223j6f 

2020 POD Innovation Award Recipients

One award went to Mathew Ouellett, Melina Ivanchikova, and Ana Ruival of Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation. The title of their innovation project is “Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom: An Online Professional Development Course for Instructors.” This online course support instructors in designing and sustaining inclusive learning environments. It’s available to  Cornell instructors in Canvas and for a global audience on  edX.org as a Massive Open Online Course. The course has run six times, with 7,291 participants. It’s companion facilitator’s guide enables adoption of the course at colleges and universities worldwide.

The second award went to Carolyn Samuel, Eva Dobler, Mariela Tovar, and Bruktawit Maru of McGill University’s Teaching and Learning Services team. The title of their project is, “What’s an assignment that really helped you learn? The survey says…”  Dr. Samuel and her colleagues surveyed McGill students about memorable assignments that helped them learn, and then created an  online repository of assignment descriptions and interviews with the instructors nominated by students. The project raises both instructors’ and students’ awareness of assessment for learning. The project also helps instructors understand how students learn and recognize the importance of varied and equitable assessment practices.

2019 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2019 POD Innovation Award went to Joe Olivier, Bridget Wagner, Daniel Stanford, Sarah Brown, and Sharon Guan from the Center for Teaching and Learning and GianMario Besana and Rosi Leon from the Office of Global Engagement at DePaul University. The title of their innovation project is Faculty Development for Virtual Exchange: Empowering Instructors to Lead Online International Learning Experiences.

In 2013, DePaul University launched a faculty development program to support “virtual exchange” experiences in courses. In these experiences, DePaul students and students from foreign institutions collaborate online over a period of several weeks, learning about each other’s cultures and completing collaborative projects together. As of the summer 2019, faculty have added virtual exchange experiences to 100 courses in dozens of disciplines, allowing 1800 DePaul students to collaborate with their peers in 26 countries. Find out more about this project by visiting https://go.depaul.edu/gle.

2018 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2018 POD Innovation Award went to Adriana Signorini, Mariana Abuan, Jose Sandoval, Gautam Panakkal, Val Murillo from the University of California, Merced in the Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning. The title of their innovation project is Students Helping Students Provide Valuable Feedback on Course Evaluations. Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) become missed opportunities when students do not provide actionable feedback. This project aimed to improve the quality of student responses on SETs by creating a peer-led presentation on the importance of SETs for students captured in a brief video. 29 courses and 529 SET responses were analyzed by the 4 participating faculty who reported an increase in actionable feedback. Find out more about this project by visiting http://cetl.ucmerced.edu/SATAL_Video.

2017 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2017 POD Innovation Award went to Elizabeth A. Barre, Justin E. Esarey, Josh Eyler, and Robin Paige from Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence for A New Tool for Course Design: The Course Workload Estimator. The Course Workload Estimator uses evidence-based estimates of reading and writing rates to calculate the time specific assignments will require. Research indicates that the amount of out-of-class work instructors assign can have significant implications for student learning. Yet we typically rely on intuition to determine how much work is reasonable. This free tool can be used by instructors and instructional developers at all institutions and in nearly every content area. Find out more about this tool by visiting http://cte.rice.edu/workload/.

2016 POD Innovation Award Recipient

The 2016 POD Innovation Award went to Michael Palmer from the University of Virginia’s Center for Teaching Excellence for c3Design: A Highly Interactive, Online Course Design Learning Environment. The c3Design online learning environment builds on UVA’s Course Design Institute to capture the best of the institute’s face-to-face experiences and augments it with a number of powerful electronic tools. It allows individual instructors to walk through the process of backward-integrated design on their own, which increases accessibility. Several innovative features support this goal: a series of well-crafted knowledge checks, an auto-populated syllabus template, a novel integration map, our award-winning syllabus rubric, and a fully searchable learning-focused syllabus database. Additional details can be found on the project website: http://www.c3design.academy/about-c3Design.

2015 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2015 POD Innovation Award went to Linda Serro and Jackie Greene from Florida Gulf Coast University’s Center for Faculty Development for Boosting for Retention and Connected Learning. The concept of “Boosting” is supported by the understanding that real learning does not occur in one-time events but needs spacing repetitions to move content into long-term memory (Thalheimer, 2006). The Ebbinghuas curve applies to faculty members who participate in professional development as well students in our classes. To mitigate this problem the Center sends a boost within a few hours of a session with faculty. They summarize the topics covered, give additional information related to the topic, include links to helpful resources, suggest ways to apply the information and remind people of upcoming topics to be covered.

2013 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2013 POD Innovation Award went to Erping Zhu and Meg Bakewell from the University of Michigan for their idea “Template for an online workshop: 1) View/Read 2) Reflect 3) Plan to implement”. This modular approach translates faculty development programming from a face-to-face to a wholly online modality. After a period of exposure to initial content, participants complete a reflective activity, and then exchange ideas with peers about incorporating new techniques into their teaching. The approach may be used by all types of higher education institutions, for many types of content. The potential for re-use makes the return on investment quite high.

2012 POD Innovation Award Recipients

Bridget Arend and Kathy Keairns, University of Denver, are the recipients of the 2012 POD Innovation Award. Their winning submission, “Online New Faculty Workshop,” details a workshop that exposes new faculty to a variety of teaching strategies and educational technologies, and models best practice in course design and teaching.  Participants work through interactive modules and contribute to discussion forums, blogs, wikis, and quizzes to demonstrate completion, and optional online discussions, live online webinars, and face-to-face sessions follow in the fall. This online version of the workshop saw vastly increased attendance, and is now required for all new faculty at the university.

2010 POD Innovation Award Recipient

The 2010 POD Innovation Award went to Jim Therrell from Central Michigan University for the idea of offering a One-Hour Conference (and Web Conference) to busy faculty who may not have time for a traditional teaching and learning conference. The One-Hour Conference (and Web Conference) is a 3-times/semester special event over 3 days (3 hours total) where faculty receive lunch, a 5-minute keynote, their choice of 2-3 breakout sessions, and follow-up resources. Along with providing choices, the conference is billed as a convenient, timely way to learn research-based methods, teaching tips, and technology techniques for creating higher impact learning. The face-to-face portion is scheduled for 2 consecutive days in order to meet diverse faculty schedules, and followed up a few days later with a webinar of the same content, The Less than an Hour Web Conference.

2009 POD Innovation Award Recipients

The 2009 POD Innovation Award went to Deb DeZure, Cindi Young, and Allyn Shaw, all three at Michigan State University, for their idea of having an orientation for mid-career faculty who have just received tenure or been promoted to full professor. “From Associate Professor to Professor: Productive Decision-Making at Mid-Career” is a half-day university-wide orientation to the mid-career experience for newly tenured faculty. The program clarifies expectations, policies and procedures for promotion to professor and identifies challenges and opportunities of the mid-career experience. The content is based on a study of mid-career faculty experiences; expectations, relevant policies and procedures; and advice from senior administrators, deans, and chairs who participate in promotion decisions and newly promoted professors.

2008 POD Innovation Award Recipients

Michele DiPietro, and several of his colleagues at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University received the 2008 POD Innovation award for the development of “An Online Tool for Teaching Consultations.”  This online tool addresses common instructor laments, educates them about the possible reasons at the root of those problems, and suggests strategies tailored to each reason. The tool takes users through 3 steps. After selecting a teaching problem, they get presented with a set of possible underlying reasons. Clicking on a reason gives a bit of background about the research in that area, and a list of solutions tailored to the reasons. The tool, available for free at http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/solveproblem/, is useful to both instructors and educational developers.