Penn State Funds Projects To Enhance Online Learning
Pennsylvania
State University's Center for Online Innovation
in Learning (COIL) will fund seven
new projects designed to enhance teaching and learning through online
innovation.
Each year
since 2012,
COIL's Research
Initiation Grant program has provided seed money for
projects
initiated by Penn State faculty, staff and students that could lead to
external
funding for larger studies. This year's seven projects, most of which
will
receive about $25,000 in funding support, examine everything from
incorporating
electron microscopy techniques into hybrid and online courses to
geospatial
visual analytics.
"These
projects emerged
from a peer-review process, edging out other worthy proposals," said
COIL
Co-Director and Professor Kyle Peck. "It's exciting to see the momentum
developing and Penn State increasing its contributions in this area."
In previous
years, COIL
grants have, for example, helped
engineering
students develop an immersive virtual reality system to provide distance
education students with a tactile classroom experience. Also,
researchers have
taken advantage of a COIL grant to pilot a computer game they designed
to help
adolescents on the autism spectrum improve their ability to understand
body
language.
In
awarding the Research Initiation Grants, COIL
typically gives priority to projects that enhance learning through
online
innovation, potentially stimulate additional external funding, and
create
collaboration among different units of the university and with other
institutions.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.