DSU receives Bush Foundation Grant

Dakota State University has received a $20,000 planning grant from the Bush Foundation Board of Directors. The grant will help Dakota State fund planning activities over the next calendar year, which will allow the University to complete a three-year, $300,000 faculty development grant to submit to the Bush Foundation.

The Bush foundation is an independent, private foundation whose endowment originated from the estate of Archibald Bush in the early 1970’s.

“We want to come up with an assessment program that faculty can use to improve teaching,” said grant coordinator Dan Talley, assistant professor for the College of Business and Information Systems. “This is essentially a grant to receive another grant.”

That grant would be a three-year, $300,000 faculty development grant that would enable Dakota State to examine the use of instructional technology and determine the best means for encouraging the use of the most effective methods using computer technology to educate students.

The monies available for the first grant will help generate research to evaluate what kinds of assessments peer institutions are using. This summer, Talley will travel to several institutions with similar missions to DSU. “We want to see what else is out there nationally and determine if they have assessment programs that DSU can compare with,” said Talley. “We want to hire an outside consultant to examine our current assessment program to adapt to the effectiveness of technology education.”

Talley says different planning activities will be implemented to gather research. “DSU will research the use of technology in an organized and thorough manner of all the different aspects,” said Talley. “We will conduct faculty surveys and set up a website to get ideas. Then we will brainstorm those ideas to promote and educate fellow faculty and evaluate their effectiveness in the classroom. As a result, we will come up with a proposal for faculty activities that will help promote the use of the best practice.”

The research will be done this summer and a proposal for the second grant will be written and submitted before the March 2002 deadline. In conjunction with the grant monies, DSU will help fund the planning activities to allow Talley and his staff to complete the three-year faculty grant proposal. Those monies will help cover salaries for him, a graduate research assistant and a consultation visit by an outside expert, as well as other expenses.

“The jury is still out on how technology improves learning,” said Talley. “We can assess what knowledge students gain, but we currently don’t assess how they received that knowledge.”