An Exploratory Process-Based Study of Inter-Institutional Research Collaboration
Yousef Jalali
The Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech offers a unique seed funding program that aims to build direct faculty-to-faculty research partnerships between faculty at Virginia Tech --- a predominantly white institution (PWI) --- and faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs). The ultimate goal of the program is to develop robust partnership. The proposed study focuses on the process-oriented illustration of collaboration and explores the nature/quality of the research collaborations, as a result of the seed funding program --- rather than focusing on functional aspects and emphasis on the outcomes of the collaborative activities such as presupposed objectives, often defined without paying appropriate attention to the nature and process of collaboration. The purpose of this project is to gain a better understanding of the nature of collaboration to not only capture and present the participants’ voices but also connect thought and praxis in ways that may inform changes to the program.
Technology-Mediated Student Engagement
Jeremy Smith
Utilizing a variety of technologies adopted in the LEWAS Lab, we are able to compare and contrast student engagement with learning materials and activities which are digitally presented. Technology to mediate student engagement includes the browser-based OWLS interface, as well as immersive 180 degree video and virtual replications of the environment.
Ethical Reasoning and the Role of Imaginal Capacity
Yousef Jalali
Although stimulating moral imagination has been a widely accepted goal of teaching of ethics, imagination doesn't often get treated as crucial to moral reasoning in the mainstream practices in engineering education. Among a few studies that addressed imaginal capacity (in ethics instruction) the focus remained on encouraging students to see different perspectives without paying attention to the importance of power relations and broad social and political factors, such as race and class. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of innovative ethics instruction that provoke imaginal capacity --- not as a mere emotional faculty but as a bridge between modes of theory and practice for liberatory purposes --- on ethical judgment and ethical decision-making. This project relies heavily on the contributions of scholars in liberation praxis and theory, in particular Gloria Anzaldúa, Paulo Freire, Phillip Hallie, and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as philosophers Martin Buber and Josiah Royce.
Methods of Evaluation for RET Participants
Jeremy Smith
As part of a summer research program, local teachers come to Virginia Tech to participate in research experiences with VT faculty. In the duration, teachers are expected to develop classroom materials based on their research experience which they can implement in their own classroom in the future. To measure teacher success, we implement the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) in two parts: the Stages of Concern questionnaire (SoC) and Levels of Use interviews (LoU). Through these two valid and reliable instruments, we are able to give powerful, valid, and reliable evaluations of the teacher's successes.
Quality Assurance and Quality Control in Continuous Monitoring Systems
Molly Sayles and Morgan Camper
A continuous monitoring system with a low sampling interval is one of the best ways to capture trends, events, and outliers within data. LEWAS lab collects water quality and quantity data about once every three minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The goal of this ongoing investigation is to determine the most efficient and accurate way to perform quality assurance and quality control on our system. Currently, the undergraduate students in the LEWAS lab perform calibration on the water quality sonde once a month. The purpose of this study is to determine other potential methods of QA/QC in order to ensure the most accurate data readings possible.