4 Faculty, 2 Staff Named 2024-25 LA Fellows

Katie Birger(Public Health): "Leveraging Curricular Analytics to Enhance Student Success in Public Health Courses." Building upon research presented at the Eighth Annual Provost's Teaching and Learning Symposium, this renewal proposal aims to explore and standardize the curricular linkages between PBHL 100, 300, and 420. Birger plans to utilize UMBC's license for Curricular Analytics to model and analyze the curriculum structure, shedding light on how course design adjustments can impact student success throughout the Public Health course sequence. By examining variables such as course sequencing, prerequisite alignment, learning outcomes, and the integration of active learning strategies, the project seeks to identify curricular inefficiencies and bottlenecks. The findings will inform evidence-based curriculum discussions and potentially influence departmental policy decisions. The overall goal is to enhance student knowledge and skills in public health, better preparing them for the workforce or graduate education, and contributing to the continuous improvement of the Public Health curriculum through data-informed curricular design.

Emily Passera (Shriver Center): “Exploring Microcredentialing to Enhance Student Engagement in Community Learning.”Building upon our previous – and now published – work, this renewal proposal delves deeper into the Shriver Center's student data to enhance understanding of effective interventions and environments. Specifically, we will investigate the potential benefits of incentivization through microcredentialing for PRAC 096 Student Coordinators. By offering microcredentials, we aim to capture students' learning journeys, provide insights into their engagement and skill mastery, and assess how microcredentialing incentives affect student leader learning recognition. A control group without microcredential incentives will be compared through survey responses to evaluate the impact on skill recognition and behavior during community engagement. Through these approaches, hopes to support student growth, improve pathways to academic success, and contribute to UMBC's broader Learning Analytics and microcredentialing initiatives.

Simon Stacey (Honors College), Robert Carpenter (Provost’s Office/DoIT) and Len Mancini (DoIT): “Using Advanced Analytics and Course Design to Enhance Team Performance and Team Member Behavior.” Building upon prior work supported by the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation in Spring 2019 ("Understanding, Assessing and Improving Student Teamwork"), this new proposal expands efforts to collect and analyze in-person conversational data to deepen our understanding of effective teamwork among college students. Dr. Stacey, Mr. Mancini, and Dr. Carpenter will employ new information technology tools to capture students' written and verbal communications as they collaborate on "wicked problems"—complex, real-world challenges without clear solutions—in the course HONR 300-07/INDS 430: Solving Wicked Problems (Fall 2024). By leveraging artificial intelligence to assess participation and communication, the project aims to identify team and team member behaviors that foster effective teamwork and lead to better outcomes. Data will be collected from various sources, including in-person discussions, online interactions, video meetings, CATME assessments, self-assessments, surveys, and team deliverables. Through these approaches, the team hopes to provide students with feedback to develop durable and transferable teamwork skills, support student growth, enhance pathways to academic and professional success, and contribute to UMBC's broader Learning Analytics initiatives.

Note: Given his role as co-sponsor of the LA Fellows, Carpenter recused himself from any evaluation of this new proposal with Stacey. He will also take no professional development award.  

Rebecca Williams (CS/EE): “Enhancing Student Visual Literacy & Critical Thinking in CMSC 436/636 (Data Visualization).”This renewal proposal aims to build upon the previous work from the 2023 LA Fellowship cycle, focusing on course interventions to address persistent student misconceptions in data visualization. These misconceptions include the belief that simple, easy-to-read charts are always effective and the assumption that data visualizations are entirely objective. Williams' continued interventions involve having students search for, annotate, and critique a broader array of visualization examples, supplementing those provided by the instructor. Additionally, the project will incorporate more rigorous qualitative analysis using Taguette, collect richer demographic data, and analyze the temporal progression of student-created graphs. By expanding these efforts, students are more likely to deepen their critical analysis skills, improve their visual literacy, and retain these competencies in the long term.

These one-year learning analytics awards are renewable pending receipt of a final report, paper submitted for publication or conference presentation. In addition to use of UMBC’s Report Exchange (REX) data warehouse, and a Tableau “viewer” license, faculty recipients can consult with staff from Analytics and Business Intelligence, Instructional Technology and Institutional Research and Decision support (IRADS). 

For more information about this year’s workshops, speakers and another learning analytics mini-grant call for proposals to be announced in Spring 25, please visit doit.umbc.edu/analytics/community. 

By John Fritz & Tom Penniston