Innovative Instruction Technology Grants Awarded

The team of researchers led by Inglis, an instructor in the Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, received a $16,000 award to develop immersive, 360-degree video of cadaver dissections.

The gross anatomy laboratory, in partnership with Crosswater Digital Media, will create videos that allow students to virtually learn about human anatomy through cadaver dissections. The project will lay the groundwork for immersive video on other clinical and surgical demonstrations.

The research team co-led by Lamb, a research associate professor of medicine and director of the Neurocognition Science Laboratory in the Graduate School of Education, received a $20,000 grant to develop an interactive virtual reality-based program to train preservice teachers for high-needs urban environments.

The project will compare the experiences of preservice teachers at UB completing a virtual reality-based program with those assigned to real-life urban teaching environments. The results will inform the development of future virtual reality programs that allow teachers to put educational theory into practice.

The team is co-led by Elisabeth Etopio, PhD, clinical assistant professor and assistant dean of teacher education in the Graduate School of Education.

In addition to the teams affiliated with the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, four other UB projects are supported by IITG awards. They include:

• a project led by Timothy Leyh, of the UB Center for Industrial Effectiveness, that aims to convert a four-course Coursera certificate on blockchain into a UB micro-credential
• a project led by Jay Stockslader, of the College of Arts and Sciences, that will create massive open online courses using the open source educational platform Open edX
• a project led by David Murray, of the Sleiman Information Assurance Lab in the School of Management, that is developing Open Cyber Arena, a hands-on cybersecurity learning environment
• a project led by Robert Wahler, PharmD, of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, that is developing a micro-credential program on patient-centered care and collaboration between health care professionals

The grants were awarded to pilot campus innovations and initiatives that have the potential to be replicated and scaled up throughout the State University of New York (SUNY) system.

IITG is a competitive grant program, open to SUNY faculty and support staff across all disciplines, that encourages the development of innovations that meet the power of SUNY’s transformative vision.

Recipients openly share project outcomes in the SUNY Learning Commons, enabling SUNY colleagues across all campuses to replicate and build upon an innovation. Now in its seventh round, the program has awarded 69 proposals with more than $1.7 million in funding.

Since 2012, the Office of the SUNY Provost has awarded $5 million in seed funds to support 225 IITG projects.