As hybrid learning becomes the norm, educators must rethink engagement strategies to ensure student success across in-person and virtual settings. This session explores edutainment—using entertainment-based techniques to create dynamic, interactive learning experiences. Research shows that active learning boosts retention, critical thinking, and motivation, making edutainment a vital tool for the future of education. Through role-playing, multimedia, gamification, and storytelling, educators can bridge the gap between physical and digital classrooms, fostering inclusivity and equitable access. Attendees will gain practical strategies for selecting hybrid-friendly tools, designing engaging activities, and assessing student learning. By embracing edutainment, educators can create immersive experiences that keep students engaged and actively participating—no matter where they learn.
In Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) we tend to focus on technical expertise. Oftentimes, unfortunately, this tends to be the sole focus when training our students. Focus on developing the whole-student should be paramount for STEM educators. We aspire to train practitioners that can both identify and execute novel ways to problem solve. Doing this requires developing, and practicing, a skill set for communicating our findings and thought processes.
Simulation-based education is essential for preparing PA students to manage sensitive cases like suspected abuse. This session focuses on designing simulations to develop empathy, communication, and clinical decision-making skills. Attendees will learn how to create realistic scenarios, use standardized patients or mannequins, and assess student performance while providing constructive feedback. The session will cover how simulation aligns with ARC-PA Standard B2.09, which requires PA programs to teach clinical and technical skills grounded in current practice. Emphasis will be placed on conducting thorough evaluations, and navigating mandated reporting. We will discuss the importance of debriefing to manage emotional impact and build resilience. By incorporating simulation strategies, educators can help students confidently approach sensitive situations, ensuring patient safety and legal adherence. Attendees will leave with practical tools to apply these strategies in their programs.
As AI tools become increasingly integrated into students’ daily lives, educators face growing challenges in ensuring that student work remains authentic and meaningful. Complicating matters, AI detection is becoming less reliable as the technology advances and students become more adept at using it. This workshop focuses on strategies to reduce inappropriate AI use—beyond prohibition, detection, and punishment. Participants will engage in interactive discussions and collaborative problem-solving to explore practical adjustments in course and assignment design. By the end of the session, attendees will leave with concrete strategies that discourage reliance on AI while preserving academic integrity and promoting genuine learning.
With increasing reliance on data-driven decision-making, higher education institutions must find innovative yet cost-effective ways to collect and analyze departmental data. This workshop explores how design thinking, with its human-centered approach, can ensure that faculty, staff, and students remain at the core of the decision-making processes, especially in the thick of AI usage. Participants will engage in hands-on activities using design thinking principles with user-centered approaches that balance efficiency with ethical considerations and AI usage. By the end of the session, educators will leave with practical strategies for leveraging AI responsibly within their departments, ensuring that technology enhances—not replaces—human expertise in shaping solutions.
This interprofessional education (IPE) research event examines collaboration of care between Physical Therapy (PT) and Physician Assistant (PA) students at the University of South Alabama in the assessment and treatment of back pain. The primary focus of this investigation centers on comparison of virtual interaction versus in-person interaction with standardized patients and whether outcomes demonstrate statistically significant variability. Additionally, the study examines participants' understanding of interdisciplinary roles and explores how this knowledge could potentially influence collaborated care. This IPE event, conducted in partnership with the South Alabama Simulation Lab, utilizes a HIPAA compliant virtual care delivery platform akin to real-world virtual care practices in PT and PA settings.
Students enrolled in introductory physical geography courses at the University of South Alabama typically use the course to meet General Education requirements. These students have little incentive to learn the material before or beyond an exam. In addition, large enrollments hinder instructors' ability to determine student comprehension during lectures. Pear Deck, Perusall, and iClicker are apps that can engage and gauge student comprehension during synchronous and asynchronous lectures during online, hybrid, and in-person meetings. Using Pear Deck in a course as described above showed that students performed better on quizzes administered via Pear Deck, which translated into moderate increases in student performance on exams. Incentivization to use Pear Deck during the lectures changed from rewarding group endeavors to individual successes.
In November 2023, a bipartisan report produced by the US Senate Committee of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs argued that AI advancements simultaneously challenge human independent thinking and interconnectivity. We must, they say, identify structures and best practices that allow humanity to evolve and compete with AI. Here, I propose that the live lecture/note-making model is a core teaching practice that will become essential as AI unfolds. Good note-making reflects critical thinking, comprehension, communication, and creation. In an age of AI and mechanized learning, notes also embody crucial human interactions between teachers and students. At the same time, however, our lecture/note-making practices must be reassessed in light of changing student thought patterns and new tools students use to make notes. Conclusions derive from a SotL conducted in the fall of 2024, where I assessed over 500 sets of student notes for a gen ed class.
Considering A. Bandura’s social learning theory, which focuses on the role of modeling in human behavior, I explored whether modeling a public speech for public speaking students improved the students’ speech performance. Speech modeling has served as an important pedagogical tool for years. However, there has been limited research to determine if modeling improves speech performance. Speeches modeled for students included the following: (1) an ice breaker speech, (2) a special occasion speech, (3) an informative speech, and (4) a persuasive speech. Implications from this study can be used to help students deliver more effective public speeches.
This session will present the Scholarship on Teaching and Learning project (SoTL) completed during the 2024-2025 academic year. The study focused on the use of Educational AI in Teaching Social Studies preservice teacher education course. I will share the pre and post survey data as well as findings from the two course assignments using Educational AI. This session will add to the conference theme regarding innovative instructional practices to increase student outcomes.
Over the last five years, learning in higher education has shifted. As the unique needs of students continue to evolve, so must our teaching and assessment methods. This research talk will explore the implementation of team-based assessments in a sport, performance, and exercise psychology course. The audience will learn about how the team-based assessments are structured for this course as well as student perceptions of this implementation. There will also be discussion surrounding how the instructor uses these team-based assessments as part of a practical application in this course (e.g., team cohesion, communication, building confidence, etc.). This project is part of University of South Alabama’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellowship Program, and thus, implications for teaching and learning outcomes will be discussed.
Service-Learning was utilized during spring 2025 in Social Work 402: Generalist Practice II, which is a required community organizing course for BSW students. This poster session will describe the experience of service-learning activities from the viewpoints of students and community partners. By virtue of participating in this session audience members will be able to: 1) describe what worked well or not for students and collaborative partners to meet the needs of the respective communities, and 2) describe what worked well or not for students to meet the learning outcomes of the course by working with collaborative partners on community projects.
The University of South Alabama’s meteorology program is distinguished by its emphasis on weather forecasting, preparing students for careers in operational meteorology through hands-on experiences. Traditional final exams often fail to comprehensively assess the critical thinking, decision-making, and real-time analysis skills required for weather forecasting. To address this limitation, a severe weather forecast simulation was implemented as an alternative to a final exam in an upper-level meteorology course. This non-traditional approach engaged students in analyzing meteorological data, assessing severe weather environments, and issuing risk-based forecasts under time constraints. Surveys were then administered to evaluate student perceptions, comparing the simulation’s effectiveness to traditional exams and evaluating whether students felt they learned more through the project compared to a traditional final exam.
This session explores the impact of client-driven feedback in project-based game/simulation development courses as a model for hybrid student engagement. Through a two-course game development sequence, we examine how faculty and client feedback influence student motivation, self-efficacy, and enjoyment. Findings suggest that integrating real-world client interactions with structured coursework enhances career readiness and engagement, reflecting the hybrid future of education. The session will include interactive discussion and participant polling to explore strategies for balancing faculty and external feedback in hybrid learning models. Attendees will leave with research-backed insights and practical applications for integrating authentic client collaboration into their courses, fostering student confidence and real-world preparedness. This session aligns with
In General Biology II laboratory (BLY122L), one course learning outcome is that students analyze data by generating and interpreting meaningful graphs. As a first step in helping students meet this objective, they complete a series of Excel-based tutorial assignments. Students are guided via brief Panopto videos through the calculation of basic descriptive statistics as well as construction of a publication-style graph. The tutorial series has been used in both in-person and fully online sections. The goal of this study is to document the effectiveness of the assignment series in building graphing ability. Pre- and post-tutorial rubric scores on graphing assignments were compared. Additionally, pre- and post-tutorial questionnaires were administered to look for gains in student confidence in graphing skills. Preliminary results of this study will be presented.
This SoTL research talk explores the use of reference sheets during testing and their effectiveness at reducing test takers anxiety. Reference sheets can be useful for decreasing student anxiety during test taking, thus increasing student performance. At first glance, a reference or “cheat” sheet may seem like an easy way for students to pass an exam without committing the content to memory. However, these sheets are only useful if students put the time into creating them, which increases healthy study habits and allows students to learn to identify the important information from a lesson while identifying gaps in their own understanding.
The 12-credit Synoptic Meteorology capstone sequence is required for the B.S. in Meteorology at USA. The course encompasses the equivalent of three separate courses offered in other Meteorology programs. It is a traditionally structured lecture/lab, where concepts are introduced in lecture, practiced as a homework assignment, and then applied daily to real-time weather situations in lab. Traditionally, a tenure-track faculty member leads the lecture, and co-leads the lab with an instructor. In 2024-2025, we introduced a third faculty member to familiarize him with the course, and decided to offer it as a Learning Community (LC). To our knowledge, this is the first time a LC approach has been used for multiple courses within a single discipline, and at the senior level. We will present specific examples of the ways that the LC allowed us to blend individual faculty expertise, participate more fully in all phases of the course, and enhance the overall student learning experience.
Supplemental Instructors (SIs) are peer-facilitated learning sessions hosted by a student who has previously taken the course and has been identified or recommended by a professor at the university to has “soft-skills” such communication, empathy, and patience. These SI sessions are typically interactive, group discussions that encourage student participation in a low-stakes environment. The authors seek to determine the student’s perception of the effectiveness to the educational benefits of the SI program implemented in the College of Engineering at the University of South Alabama. A survey was created and distributed to students and alumni who have completed courses in the College with SIs. This Research Talk will provide a brief description of the SI program, the development of the survey, and preliminary results of the survey. The presenters plan to provide the results using an audience interactive educated-guessing game.
