Courses: TECH 1010 Understanding Technology; CHEM 1010 Introduction to Chemistry
College: Woodbury School of Business
Faculty: Jared Chapman
This project proposed using an educational gamification platform named Project Delphinium to affect behaviors and attitudes that in turn impact instructional effectiveness and learning outcomes. Educational gamification is a rapidly growing approach to building student engagement and motivation by drawing on principles found in games. Games have been around for thousands of years; the earliest known examples were found in Egyptian archeological digs. There seems to be something about games that taps into human motivation and compels us to engage—to the point that some games are even addictive! Gamification asks, “what can we learn from games to improve student engagement in school?”
Gamification clearly had a large impact on student retention, completion, and performance. In a large enrollment, STEM, gateway course with a historical fail rate of about 24%, the gamified treatment group experienced:
Courses: Research
College: Humanities & Social Sciences and Science
Faculty: Jessica Hill and Others
Undergraduate research (UR) is a high-impact practice that serves as a robust intervention for students. As UVU’s Scholarly and Creative Learning Partnership Team (SCULPT) emphasized in a recent white paper, UR improves the following student outcomes, retention and completion career-related skills, discipline-specific knowledge, and higher-order thinking, such as problem solving, creativity, and knowledge transfer. These effects are strongest for minorities, first-generation students, and low income students who are all at risk of dropping out of college. Thus, in order to better understand the most effective UR mentoring practices for UVU’s student body, we propose a study in which we will gather data on the various mentoring practices of faculty from the eight colleges present on campus as well as their research team organization and structure. As there is no campus-wide data currently available on UR mentorship, team structure, or team organization, we will conduct a descriptive study to establish the “state of UR” on campus.
No major results reported due to unforeseen obstacles, but plans are in place to increase the number of participants drastically. 50 individuals have agreed to participate in a future project starting in October.
Courses: EDEL 3350 Curriculum Design and Assessment; EDEL 4530 Elementary Social Studies Methods; EDEL 4540 Elementary Creative Arts Methods; EDEL 4510 Mathematics Methods I; EDEL 4420 Language Arts Methods
College: School of Education
Faculty: Krista Ruggles
The purpose of this project is to extend the understanding of how mathematics (‘M’) in STEM education can be integrated across the content areas in K-12 and college environments. There are four groups of stakeholders who will benefit from this project: UVU undergraduate students enrolled in the Elementary Education teacher preparation program, in-service teachers in UVU’s K-16 alliance partner districts, UVU Elementary Education faculty, and K-6th grade students in partner school.
As a result of this project several peer-reviewed conference proposals were accepted and presented at national conferences along with three published peer-reviewed papers. The work is also incomplete, so additional presentations and publications are possible. This project also gave several experiences to undergraduate students in their field of study.
Courses: EDSC 4550 Secondary Curriculum Instruction and Assessment; EDSC 445G Multicultural Instruction ESL
College: School of Education
Faculty: Trevor Warburton
The purpose of this project is to involve secondary education students (preservice teachers) at UVU in the development of a local EdCamp. The expected outcomes include higher-quality field experience for early preservice teachers. This will create greater learning opportunities both during field experience and in class.
As a result of this project , a local Edcamp was successfully implemented, with many in attendance having positive experiences. This Edcamp is just the first of an annual conference for many years to come which will result in greater collaboration among educators in the area.
Courses: Research
College: Science
Faculty: Vern Hart
We propose the establishment of an artificial intelligence (AI) laboratory, which would be freely available to all research groups on campus. This resource would be housed in SB 071 and maintained by the physics department. Its availability would be advertised to involve as many students as possible in data science education. Machine learning is one of the fastest growing analytic tools in modern industry and the number of employers requiring some level of expertise in this field continues to grow exponentially.
As a result of this project, the neural network was able to accurately distinguish three different cancer cell lines from a control sample (PANC-1), including U87 (glioblastoma), HCC (epithelial lymphoblast), and DAOY (meduloblastoma), with accuracies of 89.3%, 92.4%, and 94.1%, respectively. Also, as a result of this project, the group was able to establish a collaboration with a data scientist currently working in the field. Students were also able to present their findings at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, the spring meeting of the America Physical Society, the Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research, and the Utah Academy of Sciences. The findings were also presented at a physics and biology colloquium at UVU.
Courses: CHEM 1210 Principles of Chemistry; TECH 1010 Understanding Technology
College: Engineering & Technology and Science
Faculty: Armen Ilikchyan and Elena Laricheva
The purpose of this project, which combines engaged learning and educational research components, is to develop content-based VR-enhanced instructional materials that improve understanding of the abstract physicochemical concepts in low visual-spatial ability students. To accomplish that we seek funds to: (1) assemble two multi-component VR-enhanced molecular visualization systems that can be used in any STEM classroom or during any STEM event; (2) develop VR instructional materials using the Unity game development platform and open source molecular modeling packages to illustrate abstract physicochemical concepts; and (3) explore the effectiveness of the VR-enhanced instruction on student learning in CHEM 1210.
Courses: FIN 4290 Technology Applications in Personal Financial Planning; CS 2450 Software Engineering
College: Science
Faculty: Sally Rocks
The world is awash in plastic and as the plastic detritus weathers, small particles less than 5 μm in size form. These microplastics are ubiquitous and are present in oceans, fresh water, soils and even the air of cities. Capable of concentrating heavy metals and organic molecules through surface absorption, microplastics bioaccumulate in food webs and can impact human health. It is not known if microplastics are present in Utah waterways or how they may interact with heavy metals and herbicides present in the water. This proposal aims to measure and characterize the microplastic pollution in Utah Valley while engaging UVU students in a research experience that combines lab work with real-world experience.
This proposal is a collaborative effort between the Chemistry, Earth Science and Criminal Justice departments. A group of students in chemistry will collect, purify and analyze samples. However, the analysis of the samples will involve instrumentation, faculty and upper-division students in Chemistry, Earth Science and Forensic Science. The coordination between projects facilitates peer-to-peer learning as advanced students in Earth Science and Forensics work with students from Chemistry to analyze the microplastic samples. The project is designed so that students without upper division chemistry knowledge can become engaged in research early in their academic careers. These students can grow with the project as they follow their samples through the different analysis methodologies and interact with peers in other departments.
Courses: FIN 4290 Technology Applications in Personal Financial Planning; CS 2450 Software Engineering
College: Woodbury School of Business and Engineering & Technology
Faculty: Qianwen Bi and Jingpeng Tang
The purpose of this research is threefold. The first purpose is to provide UVU students with hands-on opportunities to apply what they learn in the classroom to a real-world project. This engaged learning and research project will promote undergraduate research articles on advanced technologies used in the financial service industry. The second purpose is to enrich interdisciplinary intellectual portfolio for faculties from both financial planning and computer science departments. The third purpose is to enhance the university impact and reputation by presenting the research results on which type of Blockchain and AI is the most suitable for financial software design and the contemporary financial software prototype incorporating Blockchain and AI technologies.
"(1) Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence can be integrated in personal financial planning software and medical patient data aggregation platform for optimization and security. (2) We propose AI as a Service (AaaS) and Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) in modern personal financial planning software and medical record software. This is inconsistence with the cloud computing which is Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)"
Courses: Chemistry Lab
College: Science
Faculty: Nathan Goldfarb
The main objective of this project is to express and purify Hip1, in order to develop novel, potent Hip1 inhibitors developed in the lab.
"We successfully determined the cocrystal structure of Hip1 bound with NS-049-2 to 2.7 Angstroms resolution. The ultimate goal is to translate this inhibitor into a therapeutic for TB. The beneficiaries of this project are UVU students and the global population, if this compound is translated into a viable TB therapeutic."
