Grant Program Examples

What if I want to.....

This section is intended to help clarify the alignment between your ideas and CIT programs or services which might help. Where two options are listed, the breadth or depth of the intended project would usually suggest one or the other (a consult wth CIT could help narrow that down).

...get some VHS video digitized for use in my class? [materials development program]

...work with colleagues in two other departments to create a high-tech, high-engagement service learning course? [Fellowship or Strategic Initiative Grant]

...try out web conferencing to bring in a guest speaker to my senior honors seminar? [Jump Start Grant]

...learn how to use Blackboard more effectively for my large introductory class? [consultation or Bb Office Visit]

...develop a 3D virtual reality experience to help students better understand physical principles? [Strategic Initiative Grant or Jump Start Grant]

...create a Google Earth "fly-over" of important historical sites and dates? [Jump Start Grant]

...update my course using some new activities, but I'm not sure where to start? [consultation ]

Strategic Initiative Grants

These grants will fund projects focused on instructional improvement with technology, in alignment with the Duke strategic plan. We seek projects with high impact, and/or those which would provide a replicable model for many other faculty. Here are some "case study" examples of types of projects which might fit this program, or see our recently-funded grants. These examples illustrate possibilities but other projects that meet the criteria will be considered.

In an interdisciplinary collaboration, students in an ISIS course build multimedia-based maps of poorly-charted areas in Kenya, so that students in Biology and in the DukeEngage Kenya project can use the maps to provide better AIDS education materials and services to Kenyans in those areas.

A Chemistry professor includes an assignment in her class for which the students create multimedia learning modules to be tested and used in local grade schools to help the students meet the educational standards. In creating and testing the modules, students become engaged with the community and reflective about their own learning experiences.

The leader of a Duke interdisciplinary program requests funding and support to implement a student portfolio system pilot, in order to allow students to showcase their progress in the program. As importantly, the portfolios will also provide a method for the program to assess its achievement of its programmatic goals (based on student learning, as demonstrated in the student portfolios).

For a collection of courses in History, a group of faculty wishes to illustrate basic concepts visually through multimedia timelines or concept maps. The department requests funding to develop a series of multimedia components which would be shared among several faculty teaching the same course or sequence of courses.

For a set of service learning courses in a Humanities department, faculty script, shoot and edit a series of videos to prepare students for the service experience. The videos use interviews with faculty and current students about their experience and include tips for making the service learning component of the course more effective for students.

Students in service learning Education courses often need to access course-related materials while at their community partner sites, where they may not have reliable internet connections. Faculty in these courses request help developing a way to provide this course content via the students' cell phones.

Jump Start Mini-Grants

Mini grants provide funding and support to help faculty with pilot or (typically relatively small) proof-of-concept projects involving instructional technology. Hypothetical examples are below, or see our recently-supported Jump Start Grants.

Piloting the use of cell phones as a way to send course content to students.

Initial exploration of use of drawing tablets with laptops as a means of capturing student sketches on-the-fly during class, for discussion and annotation.

Developing a movie for a class showing a "fly-over" of an important historical location, complete with blow-up images and information sheets, using Google Earth Pro and digital images.

Using digital cameras in conjunction with GPS (global positioning system) data to digitally "mark" images with "geotags" (locational information) in order to create any of a variety of geographically-based multimedia presentations
Faculty in a Humanities department use specialized software to manipulate images or texts in novel ways in class. Copies of the software are purchased for the students and for installation in a public lab to test the efficacy of the software and to help the department determine if it should be used more widely in classes. CIT works with the faculty to create appropriate assignments, models and documentation for the students, and to assess the impact of using the software.

Faculty Fellowships

Fellowships provide support to groups of 6-8 faculty from one department or school to accomplish a curricular change project, or larger groups of faculty from non-related departments working on a theme area. Here are some examples of the types of projects that would fit this program. These examples illustrate possibilities but other projects that meet the criteria will be considered. Also see our Fellows Archive for descriptions of all Fellowships we have supported in the past.

Faculty teaching service learning courses each revise their courses to include more technology components such as use of podcasting and video to document student community activities, students and community partners working collaboratively on project reports and analyses via web-based tools, student use of blogs as reflective journals and more.

Faculty develop a new undergraduate major, including outlining learning objectives for the major, performing a curriculum analysis and course design processes to assure students accomplish the objectives, and creating data capture and reporting procedures to measure effectiveness.

Faculty develop the instructional technology aspects of the curriculum in one of Duke's new signature initiatives, for example the Global Health Institute, perhaps to include online or hybrid courses or learning components. The courses are designed over the course of a year in a Fellowship involving invited speakers on effective teaching and a series of planning and design meetings. Faculty have access to software packages to create modules for the students (and have the students create their own as an assignment) and create a public presence for the program.

To support interdisciplinary learning experiences for students, a Humanities department introduces courses co-taught by faculty from the department working in partnership with faculty from the Sciences. The faculty plan technology-enhanced activities and syllabi for the courses and work with a graduate student to learn how to use relevant software.

Materials Development Support

Assistance with actually creating course materials (requests go through a copyright review and a feasibility review prior to being accepted). Example projects are below.

An English professor digitizes short clips from several films to show in class, in order to ease the logistical hurdles of queuing up several different VHS tapes.

A Biology instructor with several carousels of 35 mm slides she owns receives help digitizing these, and consulting on how best to make them available to her students