The Innovations in Teaching with Technology Awards (ITTA) fund significant, innovative projects that have the potential to improve teaching and learning throughout the University of Iowa.

This year, five UI instructors received awards in support of their innovative approaches:

Jeanine Abrons was awarded $15,000 to develop modules for teaching students how to do health screenings and to guide students to make the correct decisions in pre-build scenarios specifically related to diabetes and cardiovascular health screenings.

Tiffany Adrain was awarded $10,484 to assist with adding a module to an existing online resource to help students studying paleontology and organismal biology learn about biology taxonomy, practical techniques in identification, and biodiversity informatics.

Matthew Arndt was awarded $5,000 to translate and adapt existing harmony and aural identification music exercises to improve matriculation rates for incoming undergraduate music students taking Musicianship and Theory I–IV, a foundational gateway sequence for all music majors that historically has a high attrition rate.

Sheila Barron was awarded $25,400 to continue and expand the development of an interactive simulation environment for learning statistical concepts. Students will gain experience in designing research, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions using role-playing in realistic situations. 

Nathan Swailes was awarded $40,000 for the development of a virtual laboratory and a game-based testing application to facilitate self-directed learning in histology and histopathology. Both solutions will augment the Virtual Microscopy that was pioneered in 2001 and resulted in revolutionizing the way biological tissue is viewed in classrooms, clinics, and research labs.