AUSTIN, Texas—Several faculty members and their collaborators in the communication, music and Middle Eastern languages departments at The University of Texas at Austin were big winners in this year’s Innovative Instructional Technology Awards Program (IITAP).
Garnering IITAP-99 honors in a three-way tie for first place, the three entries each were awarded a $2,000 cash prize in the program sponsored by UT Austin’s Office of the Provost and the Center for Instructional Technologies.
Ron Gillam, Elizabeth Pena and LaVae Hoffman of the communication sciences and disorders department won their award for Case Studies in Communication Sciences and Disorders: A Multimedia CD-ROM. Their project grew to two CD-ROMs that contain eight multimedia case study portfolios of children with atypical language development. Each case includes history information, video and audio of conversation and narration samples, written transcripts of the samples, test results and suggested learning activities.
Richard Lawn of the department of music won his award for An Interactive Website for Jazz Appreciation. Graduate students provide instruction to 400 students each year who are enrolled in jazz appreciation. Lawn designed the Website as a means of providing increased faculty instruction and guidance without actually being physically present, and to improve consistency in course content and organization from year to year. The site also includes audio and visual materials that cannot be presented in class.
Esther Raizen and Yaron Shemer, of the department of Middle Eastern languages and cultures, received their award for Hebrew from the Beginning: A Website for First and Second-Year Hebrew Students. It is a multimedia instructional package that provides students and instructors of Hebrew language with a unique set of materials that integrate textbooks, computer tutorials, short movies and interviews with a wide variety of Hebrew speakers.
Sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the CIT, a division of the University’s Academic Computing and Instructional Technology Services department, IITAP is a program designed to encourage and reward faculty efforts to develop new multimedia course content for UT Austin courses using emerging technologies.
UT Austin faculty or UT Austin faculty-student/staff teams are invited to enter innovative, digital-based instructional materials that have been developed specifically for UT Austin courses. Submitted materials are judged by a panel of experts including the top three faculty winners from the previous year’s IITAP, members of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, experts in instructional design and members of multimedia publishing industries.
For additional information, contact Dr. George Culp, director of the Center for Instructional Technologies, (512) 475-9474 or by e-mail at g.culp@cc.utexas.edu
