The primary purpose of this project is to experiment with socially interactive robots for teaching about interactive media and to create Human-Robot-Interaction interfaces for social scientific research. This project aims to implement a “learning by doing” strategy for teaching in new media. Students will get valuable learning experience about (1) designing and conducting experimental research; (2) applying various theories to real research settings; and (3) building valid and reliable measures in social and psychological research. The ultimate goal is to relate to the strategic initiative of Boston College.

This project aims to install a wireless weather station on the roof of O’Neill Library for 24-hour acquisition of local weather data. Real-time weather data will be made available to the BC community and wider public through a dedicated website and monitor display to be installed in Devlin Hall. Weather data acquired by the station will be archived on a website for use in BC courses and by the wider BC community and public.

This project aims to develop a system for the easy storage, retrieval and annotation of primary scientific data generated by department equipment such as, but not limited to, mass spectrometers (MS), nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers (NMR), X-ray crystallography detectors, and chromatography systems. The system will be designed for automated uploading of data to a central database. Individual researchers, group members or faculty advisors would have access to download these data. Researchers would have access to appropriate processing software either located centrally on a cluster, or locally on their own workstation.

Digital Imaging, web-based media, video art and video installation are at the forefront of contemporary art practice and a mainstay of museum exhibitions. The proposed project seeks to address some of the pressing technology and curriculum needs of the Fine Arts Department through the creation of a new video art class and the acquisition of technology and equipment which would be jointly used by students and faculty in the Studio Art Department, Art History Department, Film Studies and The McMullen Museum to develop and exhibit video art as well as supplemental digital and web –based media in conjunction with an interdisciplinary course, exhibition and catalog examining an important collection of Civil War era drawings.

This project will aim to develop and implement a series of innovative simulations and animations to support students at Boston College in learning how to use technology to solve and interpret problems across disciplines. This project leverages existing resources such as the tablet PC lab that was recently received through a grant by the Hewlett Packard Foundation. Specifically, eight different but inter-related educational technology tools will be developed through this work ranging from the use of established technologies such as Microsoft Excel to new technologies such as augmented reality tools. The target courses for this work are GE182 and ED546. Other courses that will benefit and have committed to using the tools are BI445 and ED109.

This project aims to acquire autostereoscopic equipment for teaching and research in biochemistry, chemical biology and structural biology. Autostereoscopic flat panel displays use an innovative technology that allows a group of students or researcher to view three-dimensional (3D) images without the use of extremely expensive 3D shutter glasses. This new technology provides the opportunity for small learning groups or a number of researchers to collaborate on trying to understand how the complex molecules in the cell function.

The purpose of this project is to enhance critical thinking and clinical decision-making among CSON students through the use of high-fidelity simulation models in the Nursing Laboratory. This educational goal will be met by adding three virtual reality training models (adult, pediatric and infant) to the standard training models presently in constant use in our nursing lab. The technology will be used to address two existing problems: 1) increasing CSON enrollments with no increase in faculty numbers and 2) need for significantly enhanced exposure of nursing students to complex health problems in diverse populations.

The Biology Department proposes to introduce new computer-based exercises dealing with various aspects of cardiovascular, neuromuscular and respiratory physiology into upper-division physiology laboratory classes. The Department has selected a commercially available system that is robust, intuitive and adaptable to different computer platforms. The system comes with a wide range of activities that will allow the course instructors to update and refine laboratory exercises as needed. The equipment will provide students with hands-on experience in monitoring physiological functions.

A Core-level course that offers the opportunity to program a personal robot will arouse students' interest and stir their imaginations. There has been significant recent research indicating that studying robotics provides a level of excitement attractive to all students, but especially for women and minorities. The prospect of working with a robot could help to motivate all types of students who might not otherwise be attracted to a discipline that is often seen as the preserve of the "nerd". In this project, I am requesting funds to purchase 15 personal robots and programming assistance for use in a Boston College core course on computing.

One of the goals of a world language course is to provide a curriculum and supplementary learning resources to assist learners in attaining higher linguistic proficiency and a broader insight into the culture of the country/countries where the target language is spoken. Providing students opportunities outside of the classroom to participate in real-life conversations with native speakers is essential to the realization of proficiency goals. Through the use of new communications technology, the proposed project represents such an opportunity. In twelve, one-hour InterLangua sessions over twelve weeks, students enrolled in three Spanish language courses, as well as School of Nursing students learning medical Spanish in preparation for a service trip to Nicaragua, will speak with, see and hear over the Internet in full-motion video conference a personal tutor living and working in Guatemala.

The main objective of this long-term project is to produce video recordings of popular culture in South America in order to include them into the courses taught on contemporary Latin American culture in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. Another integral part of the project is to include students in the editing process as part of the film courses taught at Boston College. The current project focuses on the relationship between banditry and politics in the mid-nineteen sixties in Argentina. The goal is to reconstruct, through interviews and archival materials the life of IsidroVelázquez, an Argentine bandit who, following the likes of Robin Hood, for almost a decade robbed and extorted money from the wealthy landowners of the Northeast of Argentina in order to redistribute it among the poorest peasants in the region.

The digital capture and distribution of course lectures has come to be seen as pedagogically useful in CSOM. Despite its utility, however, digitally distributing lectures has not spread widely throughout the department for one major reason: the production time involved. This pilot would test out/compare two course capture systems that make producing and sharing lecture presentations in digital format easy for instructors. These systems allow instructors to easily capture the audio, video and presentation materials used during a class and publish the combined materials into a storage location like Blackboard Vista or iTunes U.

This project, “EagleEyes II : Exploring the Next Steps in Human/Computer Interaction” will seek to augment the existing EagleEyes system by incorporating brainwave analysis and feedback into the controlling of the computer cursor on the screen, and as a means of simulating a mouse click.

This project extends the purpose of online social networking to social outreach and education. A prototype for GenerationPulse, launched two years ago, successfully enabled hundreds of students to engage with youth displaced by Hurricane Katrina through a mutual, online exchange of writing and art. ATIG would provide critical seed money for catapulting GenerationPulse to the next level by achieving three related goals: 1) pilot a methodology to connect BC students with youth in the underdeveloped world, specifically, Africa; 2) advance the GenerationPulse website to allow the next level interactivity; 3) develop GenerationPulse as a service-learning laboratory.

The purpose of this project is to customize space in Cushing Hall (Simulation Room) with equipment approximating a patient hospital room for use with virtual reality training models (adult SimMan and infant SimBaby). The training models (manikins) were funded by ATIG support in 2007-08. Virtual reality technology in CSON is being implemented to prepare students in large clinical courses across our undergraduate, graduate and nurse anesthesia programs for critical care practice. High-fidelity simulation requires realistic settings where learners can suspend disbelief and practice skills in an environment as close to reality as possible. Therefore, actual hospital equipment must be available for scenario practice exactly as students would find it in hospital settings. Installation of media hardware for real-time and delayed scenario debriefing as students practice with the manikins is a critical need. Scenarios are useful practice only when faculty/student debriefing of recorded scenarios occurs immediately following the scenario enacted. Faculty Simulation Training is needed to optimize full use of the models in diverse clinical courses for students with wide variations in clinical experience. CSON clinical faculty members have been identified whose interest in high-fidelity simulation assures long-term investment in the technology for course use. They will complete the two-day Faculty Simulation Training as well as a two-day onsite simulator Assembly and Programming course previously purchased from the manikin vendor.

The goal of this project is to create a collaborative mapping tool that will enable students to re-imagine and construct a specific historical moment or era. It will be designed to encourage direct exploration of course content for, initially, historical and literary texts, but potentially for content from disciplines across the university. Its object is to construct an application that will draw on the student’s creativity and put his or her affinity with the world of virtual reality to work in the pursuit of learning and scholarship.

The purpose of this project is to provide digital recording of student lawyer-client meetings coupled with a video/audio tagging application and editing software that would allow clinical faculty at Boston College Law School’s Legal Advocacy Bureau to analyze and annotate law student video/audio performances.

A computer programmer will design a website that will not only provide students with clear and concise explanations of the rules, but also provide the capacity to hear how words are pronounced through interactive exercises. The website could be used by students at all levels (beginner through advanced) at Boston College and beyond as a tool for reviewing and practicing the rules of accentuation in Spanish.

The purpose of this project is to acquire a 3D computer projection system for classroom teaching in biochemistry, chemical biology and structural biology. Up until recently, it has been nearly impossible to utilize stereoscopic 3D projection in the classroom. Recently, Lightspeed, Inc. has introduced their new DepthQ WXGA HD 3D video projector, which is affordable, high quality, portable and versatile. This projector can be moved from one classroom to another providing the ability to utilize 3D presentations in a number of the courses in our department. This new innovative technology provides the opportunity for an entire class to take advantage of a 3D learning experience.

The most fundamental component of the Boston College Writing Fellow program is the verbal and written dialogue that takes place between a student and a writing fellow as they discuss ways to develop and improve the student’s writing. Our primary goal with this project is to technologically support and preserve the collaboration between the student and the Writing Fellow. This interaction has immediate value to the student and the instructor of the course. The record of that interaction has longer term value to the directors of the Writing Fellow program as we seek to improve the program and document its efficacy in strengthening the writing capabilities of Boston College undergraduates. No other university Writing Fellow program has developed such technological support for their program, and this is an opportunity for the Boston College program to become a leader in the technological support of student writing development.

The purpose of this project is to acquire a 3D computer projection system for classroom teaching in biochemistry, chemical biology and structural biology. Up until recently, it has been nearly impossible to utilize stereoscopic 3D projection in the classroom. Recently, Lightspeed, Inc. has introduced their new DepthQ WXGA HD 3D video projector, which is affordable, high quality, portable and versatile. This projector can be moved from one classroom to another providing the ability to utilize 3D presentations in a number of the courses in our department. This new innovative technology provides the opportunity for an entire class to take advantage of a 3D learning experience.

The goal of the Boston College Integrated Sciences Virtual Cleanroom Project is to make the new nanofabrication cleanroom facility even more accessible and provide a unique learning environment for students, interested staff and faculty, and prospective students and faculty. We propose to upgrade computer network connection speeds in the cleanroom facility and in the seminar room in Higgins Hall from the standard 100 Mbps to up to 1 Gbps, or to implement a new Cleanroom-Higgins network pending consultation with information technology services. Using virtual network computing (VNC) software, we will remotely connect to the computers operating equipment within the cleanroom from the seminar room in Higgins Hall. The enhanced network connection speeds will allow seamless remote operation of the equipment in the cleanroom. This is particularly important for the electron, ion and scanning probe microscopeswhere interactions with live video are required.

The overall purpose of this technology grant is to collaborate with the teachers and students at St. Columbkille Partnership School, which is jointly owned and operated by Boston College and the Archdiocese of Boston, on a community-wide initiative, Digital History project. The Digital History project will explore the theme of immigration through the overarching question, How does a society respect and honor diversity and at the same time create a common bond? One of the Lynch School’s overarching goals is to prepare professional, collegial teachers who are committed to social justice education. St. Columbkille Partnership School shares this mission and works to deepen students’ connections to the community. Technology initiatives in K-12 schools are often disconnected from the curriculum. Teachers are exposed to technology through stand-alone professional development sessions that focus on the technical aspects of a particular tool. Teachers, as a result, struggle to successfully integrate technology into particular lessons and units. By collaborating with Facing History and using well-designed curricula, the Digital History team can focus on embedding technology into teachers’ and students’ classroom experiences. We plan to achieve these goals through the implementation of a Digital History project that combines high-quality curriculum material, from critically acclaimed Facing History, with pedagogy-rich professional development to facilitate student-generated digital works.

The purpose of this project is to introduce learning by simulation into the undergraduate Childbearing clinical course. The grant will be used to purchase the obstetrical high-fidelity simulation models (Birthing Noelle and Newborn Hal) as well as equipment necessary to create a realistic obstetrical hospital environment. It is well documented that human simulation provides a unique teaching modality that fosters transference of theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom to real-life situations without jeopardizing patient safety. Complex disease processes often complicate routine pregnancies and require nurses to make swift, accurate assessments and implement timely interventions. To develop these skills, nursing students will learn in scenarios that evoke realistic patient responses and allow for learner trial and error without sacrificing efficient and safe delivery of patient care. High-fidelity simulation will enhance—not replace— clinical coursework, allowing CSON Childbearing faculty to provide quality education, meet the demands of increasing enrollment, and develop the next generation of nurses as competent and valuable members of the health care team.

This proposal seeks support to develop a series of computer laboratories to enhance students' understanding of modern statistical concepts, and to develop the computer tools needed to support the laboratories. The laboratories and tools will be written in Mathematica (Wolfram Research, Inc.), an advanced mathematical programming environment, and they will be designed to take advantage of Mathematica's unique features.

This ATIG project will (1) assay the efficiency of fNIR technologies in identifying neuropsychological mechanisms and measuring neurophysiological correlates of participants’ experiential state in various
interactive media interfaces; (2) leverage NIBP measuring techniques to induce optimal experience (flow state) in media psychology experiments; and (3) examine whether changes in the spectral composition and regional cortical distribution of the EEG might be systematically related to the degree of participants’ engagement with electronic games, e-commerce-based brand marketing, exergame-based health communication interventions, and haptics-based media interfaces that utilize structural manipulations of various technological factors.

This ATIG revolves around technology that is crucial for deeply and efficiently examining three aspects of children’s learning of numerical information from board games: 1) microgenetic analysis of the contributions of social interactions during play to learning; 2) relations between game board structure and the kind and quality of instructional statements; and 3) influence of individual differences in information processing on rate and extent of learning. Examination of these aspects will contribute to theory about how children form new cognitive representations through interactions with physical materials. It will also provide important information about how physical materials can be enhanced to maximize learning with minimal cost and effort. The results have important implications for how to best integrate numerical board games into instruction (e.g., have two peers play or use in small groups with a teacher).

This ATIG hopes to respond to the question: Will this game-based lab make a difference between learner outcomes in a virtual lab setting versus the current physically-based lab environment? Thus, to evaluate the efficacy of the forensic virtual laboratory as a valuable learning experience and to ensure that participating in this interactive environment can increase student cognition and practice of proper forensics techniques, we propose three mechanisms. First, a Pre and Post evaluation survey designed to measure student perceived confidence level in performing various forensic procedures and attitudes (affective domain). Second, evaluation of the student’s actual technical ability in evidence collection and processing, data analysis and interpretation (effective domain). Third, analysis of a comparison research tool between labs done with and without the virtual lab.

This project is an emerging initiative and is an outgrowth of both National Science Foundation funded work (with the goal of obtaining additional NSF funds) and previous ATIG grant support. In a previous ATIG grant Dr. Barnett and his project team developed an interactive flash-based tree identification key (http://www.urbanecologyscience.org/interactives/bc_tree_id.swf) and an interactive Carbon Footprint tool (http://www.urbanecologyscience.org/interactives/co2_emission.swf) and a complex excel spreadsheet that users can use to determine the ecological value of trees (http://www.urbanecologyscience.org/interactives/treeimpact.xls). These tools have all been integrated into a textbook for high school students on Urban Ecology. Further, Dr. Barnett as a part of his sabbatical has already developed the set of functional specifications and for a mobile application that supports tree identification. Thus, the primary goal of the work proposed here is to bring the application, that we are calling TouchTree, to the market and to develop the underlying database structures and web-based interfaces to allow the scaling of the program across the nation. This background work means that the project team is in a position to create a highly innovative and creative set of tools that has significant potential to be widely used both at Boston College and in a variety of formal and informal education contexts.

Core components of the GSSW’s new Social Innovation Initiative have been designed to use technology for promoting innovation by organizations in the social service sector that want to identify new approaches for addressing today’s compelling social problems.  Social Innovation represents a new paradigm about social change that supports the development, implementation, and sustainability of transformational responses to social needs.

The technologies will make it possible to accomplish three important goals established for the Initiative:  1) Given the strong linkage between technology and innovation, the technologies will contribute to the generation of innovative ideas for responding to today’s compelling social problems; 2) the Initiative will introduce both MSW students and social service leaders to new technologies that they can, in turn, apply for other uses; and 3) the technologies will be critical for the creation of a community of social innovators that includes both practitioners and academics.

The technologies discussed in this proposal are: 1) telepresence that allows for synchronis exchanges and broad participation in innovation training and knowledge-sharing experiences; and  2) a website that supports the development of a community of social innovators and allows for on-going interactions. Using these advanced technologies, the project will cultivate leadership for social innovation among social service practitioners, build innovation capacity within existing social service organizations, and contribute to scholarship on social innovation.

Simply, this project combines teaching, research, a public exhibition, a rare book collection and the use of the latest technology to bring all of these things together in a dynamic and engaging way. For more than four and a half centuries Jesuits have used books to foster scholarship, create cross-cultural dialogue on matters of faith and reason and communicate across vast differences. Boston College and the rare Jesuitana collection housed in its Burns Library not only represent that tradition of learning and exchange but also exemplify the ongoing commitment to engage the world and encourage the construction of cathedrals of the mind. This project harnesses the heirlooms of the past to the emergent technologies of the present to educate new generations of scholars who might yet become the next Matteo Ricci or Candida Xu, Rousseau or Thomas Hyde.

This grant is sought to fund an interactive database and greenhouse gas sensors for studies that link plant ecology, tree demography and phenology to biogeochemistry and climate change.  We will create an online repository for a campus tree and carbon inventory that can be queried by the BC community, particularly to learn about ways species differ in their responses to climate change and to quantify potential feedbacks on climate via changes in land use that affect soil respiration.  A web-interface such as that which is described below will provide; valuable opportunities for undergraduate research outside of traditionally funded laboratories, means of communicating information about climate change as it relates to species on campus, and tools to assess the sustainability and carbon footprint of Boston College as an institution.

Professor Duggan has requested an ATIG to fund a program that will enable her to move to a digital system for collecting, analyzing, and editing recorded interactions of human behavior that she obtains as part of her research as a social scientist.  Currently she is using the pencil and paper method to document this information. This technology would not only be used in Professor Duggan’s scholarship, but also in her academic role.  She teaches research methods, nonverbal communication, and health communication.  All of these courses would benefit from the use of this technology either as an example of a research tool or as a real life example of human interactions.

This grant seeks support for the creation of an innovative, course-based exhibition that will be mounted simultaneously on-line and at Boston College, the Boston Public Library and, perhaps, the Massachusetts Historical Society in the spring of 2012. Titled "Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History," the exhibit will be created by BC students working with me, graphics, web, and audio designers, and area curators in a course that will run during the 2011 fall semester. While the approach of the course and exhibit is generally historicist, its concentration on a small area within a half-mile of Boston Common intensifies the local context and adds a service element to the potential impact of its research. Inadequately celebrated and memorialized, the literary history of Boston between the Revolution and the Civil War is replete with stories waiting to be told. My students and I will find and choose some of the most interesting of these “forgotten chapters.” In connection with the exhibition, we will create a detailed (and complete as possible) map of Boston that highlights sites associated with pre-1860 literature. Technology consultants can help us share our findings with the local, national, and global audience they are intended to inform.