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2019 PROVOST’S LEARNING INNOVATIONS GRANTS

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The Provost’s Learning Innovations Grants (PLIG) program was developed to broaden and enrich the learning experience of RIT students by funding faculty-initiated projects that enhance student learning. Managed by the Innovative Learning Institute (ILI), this program has been designed to:

Better support dissemination of individual faculty learning to the wider faculty population

Integrate funding with Institute priorities

Support the scholarship of teaching and learning

I. ELIGIBILITY

All full-time RIT faculty (tenured, tenure-track, visiting, lecturers, etc.) are eligible to apply.

II. GRANT TYPES

There are two types of grants—Exploration and Focus—for PLIG 2019. Full details are available on the Grants Types page of the PLIG website (www.rit.edu/plig).

III. USE OF GRANT FUNDS

Provost’s Learning Innovations Grants for 2019 may range from $1,000-$5,000.

Examples of the use of PLIG funds include:

Course release (reasonable, actual replacement costs for faculty members removed from teaching)

Development of new technology-based learning tools and/or environments

Technologies or equipment required that are not normally provided by the department/college

Resources for research design and consultation, data collection and aggregation, instrument development and/or purchase, secure data storage, data analysis, and report generation

Travel to support research activity and/or meet with potential funding sources

IV. PLIG TIMELINE AND TASKS

The grant timeline assumes that most recipients will use the Spring 2019 and/or Summer 2019 term(s) to plan and develop their PLIG-funded project for delivery or implementation during the Fall 2019, Spring 2020, and/or Summer 2020 term(s). The full timeline, including grantee tasks, is available on the PLIG website.

V. SELECTION COMMITTEE AND EVALUTION CRITERIA

Applications for PLIG funds are evaluated by the PLIG selection committee according to the following criteria:

Utility (solves a defined problem; has potential to benefit many courses/faculty)

Creativity (is a novel approach or application; represents a new paradigm)

Efficacy (uses an evidence-based approach; impact to student learning and/or the student experience can be demonstrated)

The criteria are further defined, illustrated, and explained in the Proposal Evaluation section of the PLIG website.

VI. QUESTIONS

Please email plig@rit.edu with any questions about the PLIG process.

(Examples of previously funded projects are available in the Previous Awards section of the PLIG website).

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2019 PROVOST’S LEARNING INNOVATIONS GRANTS

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

1. Complete this Application Form and save as “Lastname_Firstname_APP” (using your name).

2. Ask your Department Head to complete the Department Head Certification, scan and save as, “Lastname_Firstname_SIG” (using your name).

3. Email all documents to plig@rit.edu, no later than 11:59pm ET, January 21, 2019.

If you have any questions about completing this application, please contact Michael Starenko at 585-475-5035 or mssetc@rit.edu.

APPLICANT INFORMATION

This application is for a (please select one type of grant):

Exploration Grant

Focus Grant – Active Learning Across All Course Modes

Principal Applicant Name: Roger Chen

Faculty Title: Assistant Professor Email: rbcgis@rit.edu Phone: 585-475-5802 (Full-time only)

College: Golisano Institute for Sustainability _______ Department: Academic

Department Head Name: Thomas Trabold Email: tatasp@rit.edu

Others involved in the project (if any): Dr. Pradeep Murukannaiah, Software Engineering, GCCIS

Project Name: Choose Your Own Adventure: Interactive Narratives for Teaching Collective Impacts of Individual

Decisions in Sustainable Systems

Total Funds Requested (as calculated on the budget worksheet on the next page): $5,000.00 (requests of $1,000 to $5,000 will be considered)

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BUDGET

Complete the table below to calculate your budget

The total shown on this worksheet must match the “Total funds requested” in the Applicant Information section on page 1 of this application form.

If awarded, additional funds will be provided to cover any benefits and ITS expenses associated with the salary budget requested.

Note that any equipment or other materials purchased with grant funds are the property of your department and revert to the department after your project is completed

Personnel Purpose/Justification Amount

Full-time Faculty/Staff

Roger Chen summer time for project $250.00

Pradeep Murukannaiah summer time for project $250.00

Adjuncts, Part-time Faculty/Staff, Summer Salary

Student Workers, Graduate Assistants

GRA 1 Design Narrative and Optimal Solution $3,000.00

GRA 2 Design Delivery Mechanisms $1,500.00

Personnel Total $ 5000.00

Equipment Purpose/Justification Amount

Equipment Total $ 0.00

Travel Purpose/Justification Amount

Travel Total $ 0.00

Other (Specify) Purpose/Justification Amount

Other Total $ 0.00

Total Award Requested $5,000.00

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STATEMENT OF UTILITY (two pages maximum)

Using the evaluation criteria outlined in the Proposal Evaluation section of the PLIG website, please provide an overview of the project you are proposing, including:

Project objectives

An explanation of the teaching/learning problem(s) it is designed to address

An explanation of the significance of the project to student outcomes and/or the student experience.

A brief description of how the project integrates with activity already underway at RIT in a priority area and/or

how this approach has been successfully used at RIT already.

Project Objectives: The main objective of this work is to develop an interactive group narrative tool for teaching

students the impacts of individual decisions on system-level outcomes. A critical concept in many sustainability and

technology contexts is the impact of individual actions on communities and societal well-being, such as pollution

and other negative externalities. We propose to develop an interactive group narrative tool for teaching and helping

a group of readers understand how these decisions translate into community and societal consequences.

Interactive narratives refer to a genre of stories where the reader assumes the protagonist’s role and makes choices

that determine the main character's actions and the plot's final outcome. Examples include books (such as the

Choose Your Own Adventure series), text-based video games (such as the Zork Series or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy) and streaming internet shows (such as Bandersnatch on Netflix). We develop a similar narrative, but for a

group of readers that make individual choices with outcomes that depend collectively on the choices of all the

readers. We deliver this story over a fixed number of segments over the semester through a bi-weekly comic strip,

and include a class discussion on the outcome of the previous set of reader choices.

We initially target ISUS 706 – Economics of Sustainable Systems, offered every Fall Semester as a core class. We

design this tool for two contexts: (i) an emergency community evacuation due to climactic extreme weather

conditions and (ii) introduction of autonomous buses into a transit fleet.

Explanation of the Teaching/Learning Problem(s): A key concept in economics is the difference between

individual agent versus social costs and optimal policies from each perspective. Economic theory is replete with

examples where the social optimum allocation, where the total social cost is minimized, differs significantly from the

individual user equilibrium allocation where individual costs are minimized. The problem becomes more complicated

and complex when individual costs do not map linearly and additively to social costs. Several examples in resource

economics exhibit this property, including the boat access problem for fisheries and the pollution problem. The

social optimum solution also relies on understanding the concept of marginal costs with respect to the total social

cost. Conventionally, these concepts are taught through a mathematical program that optimizes this allocation

based a user or social perspective. However, for students who often look at these problems as the consumers of

the final allocation, the conceptual mechanics of the problem are typically lost.

Significance of the Project to Student Outcomes and/or the Student Experience: This project contributes

towards translating conventional economic systems concepts into an active learning context. Active learning

engages students in various activities that help advance their understanding and knowledge of a particular subject.

For this work, students actively participate in the interactive narrative – they make decisions as part of the narrative,

learn about the social consequences of their collective choices, and experiment their decisions. This process

improves student learning outcomes related to critical and most important systems thinking. These are particularly

difficult to grasp due to outcomes that depend on systems with multiple agents making multiple decisions

simultaneously. Difficulty in understanding these systems is compounded by the need to devise polices and

strategies that consider these multiple simultaneous decisions in systems.

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Integrating with Activity underway at RIT: A key education and learning component of this work is the interactive

narrative as a vehicle for delivering the economics systems concept of user equilibrium versus social optimum

allocation. We innovate on this concept by developing a bi-weekly comic strip that walks readers through a series

of choice in the context of two complex systems scenarios (i) emergency community evacuation and (ii) introducing

autonomous vehicles into existing fleets. RIT has a long history in the development of interactive games and media,

in addition to story-crafting. Our learning activities proposed align well with these.

Additionally, RIT recognizes Artificial Intelligence as a critical research direction for the university. There have been

efforts to create several AI-related programs across the university. Although the traditional AI challenges are

algorithmic in nature, there is an increasing recognition that widespread adoption of AI creates several key

challenges at the intersection of AI and society. Our work, which contributes toward an understanding of multiagent

systems, collective intelligence, and human-AI collaboration, aligns with the university’s focus on AI.

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Statement of Creativity (three paragraphs maximum)

Provide a brief description of how this is a novel approach, or a new application of an existing mode or model of teaching and learning, and/or research about how teaching and learning represents a new paradigm.

A key concept on economics is the social optimum allocation, where the total social cost is minimized, which differs significantly from the individual user equilibrium allocation where individual costs are minimized. The problem becomes more complicated and complex when individual costs do not map linearly and additively to social costs. Conventionally, these concepts are taught through a mathematical program that optimizes this allocation based a user or social perspective. However, for students who are more consumers of the final allocation, the conceptual mechanics of the problem are typically lost. Thus, we develop an innovative approach to teach optimization through the interactive narrative. While the final outcome may not be close to the social optimum allocation, students will learn how interdependent decisions are and how trajectories of systems may be steered by the decisions of a few members of a community. We expect that learning these concepts by experiencing the outcomes deepens students’ understanding as well as prompts them to think about practical issues they may not think about if they only learn the theoretical aspects of the problem.

Further, we leverage the concept of interactive narratives to engage students in the problem. Students without a strong background in economics (often the case with students in sustainability) often find the mathematical aspects of the problem too dry. Our approach, which blends mathematical aspects with creative narratives not only deepens students understanding of the problem, but also makes the process entertaining.

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STATEMENT OF EFFICACY (two pages maximum)

Provide a brief description of the experiment/research design, methodology, and methods of data collection and analysis you will use to gauge efficacy.

In our study approach, we have students engage in an economic experiment with the façade of group interactive narrative in the form of bi-weekly comic strip where readers make a choice or action at the end of each comic strip.

When investigating complex systems with social and technological components, and many interacting elements, or considering the impacts of new policies or technologies, typical approaches include formulating analytical models of idealized situations or conducting computer simulations.

Laboratory experiments are necessary when i) the system under consideration involves complex dynamics and collective effects are of interest, which can be costly and complicated to measure in the real world; ii) the situations or policies of interest are not available in the real world or are not consistent with the same system; iii) control of extraneous factors is desired; and iv) understanding the dynamics and learning processes is of concern. Due to the richness in mechanisms from economic systems, such as information feedback, behavioral dynamics and learning processes, controlled experiments with many real humans are necessary in evaluating the potential benefits, which are collective. We carry out similar mechanisms in the form of a weekly comic strip. The approach taken has six main components:

i) Decision Situation – a hypothetical or problem context faced by respondents. Initially two situations will be considered: (a) emergency household evacuation and (b) introducing autonomous buses into a transit fleet.

ii) Experimental Task(s) – these are well-defined and performed by respondents. These can be single activities (i.e. choose to evacuate the home), sequential (i.e. choose to evacuate the home and pick up neighbor), and/or a combination of response types (i.e. provide an estimate of time to safety).

iii) Interaction “Box” – determines the payoffs given decisions. For the evacuation scenario this will be the travel time to safety determined by the congestion households experienced by departing their home at a specific time, in addition to another trip-chaining decisions made. In this proposed work, social costs (time to safety, etc.) are determined collectively from all the decisions of all players. System performance measures arise as a result of all route choices and departure time decisions made. To model this, an analytical traffic network performance model will be used.

iv) Currency – results from the interaction of supplied responses. This represents a payoff system and is how “scores” are kept. In economics experiments this is typically in monetary terms.

v) Feedback Mechanism – provides information to respondents at the end of a choice dependent on the performance of his/her strategy, which depends on the collection of choices.

vi) Stopping Criteria – for stopping the interactive process; this may be a predetermined number of iterations or a rule that depends on the system state (i.e., end of the story.)

At the end of the exercise, the final system state as dictated by the choices throughout the semester based on the path dictated by the group is compared to the optimal allocation. The general experimental procedure is depicted below in Figure 1.

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DESCRIBED DECISION SITUATION – NARRATIVE

(Evacuation Scenario)

READER (STUDENT) DECISIONS

AND CHOICES

1) Evacuate Home

2) Departure Time from Home

3) Tweet Experiences/Information

4) Choose Traffic Network Exit

5) Other Relevant Decisions

TRAFFIC NETWORK MODEL

(ANALYTICAL OR SIMULATION)

Social Cost Outcome of Decisions/Choices

SET t=t+1

SYSTEM

FEEDBACK FOR

ITERATION t

COMIC STRIP

(NARRATIVE) FOR

ITERATION t+1

Figure 1: Summary of Study Procedure

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ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS Please address these questions, if needed.

Will your project require assistance for extensive or unusual media, multimedia, simulation, and/or software development? If so, please explain?

All courses offered by RIT must be accessible to students with disabilities, according to Section 504 of the

Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

(rit.edu/studentaffairs/disabilityservices/info). Is your proposed teaching approach accessible to all students, with

reasonable accommodation? If not, please explain.

RIT abides by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), which prohibits instructors from

making students' identities, course work, and educational records public without their consent

(rit.edu/xVzNE). Will any data gathering or sharing for your project raise any FERPA issues? If so, please explain.

No

Yes

No

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DISSEMINATION AGREEMENT

By completing this grant application, I agree to provide the materials and services described here, in support of disseminating what is learned from this project to the RIT community.

I also agree to return all/a portion of the funds that I receive for this project to RIT if I fail to complete or provide the materials described here:

Full Project Plan (including roles and responsibilities, milestone dates, and pertinent project details)

Preliminary Findings report (may include experiment/study design, lessons learned, initial data collection,

and/or literature review summary)

Participation in an ILI/TLS Preliminary Findings Roundtable dissemination event (share and discuss your

preliminary findings with your PLIG cohort)

Final Summary of Findings (including data collection, lessons learned, implications for further study, and

which may be in the form of an article abstract, conference presentation outline, or short report)

Final budget accounting (reconciliation of budget provided with your application and the actual project

expenses)

Participation in an ILI/TLS PLIG Showcase dissemination event (present a poster or other display at the

annual Showcase)

By submitting this application, I accept this agreement. RBC (applicant, please initial here)

TIMELINE AND TASKS

Please indicate any variances to the planned PLIG 2019 schedule as described in the above Dissemination Agreement and the reasons for this variance. If you do not intend to deviate from the schedule, you may leave this section blank.

Task Date Proposed Variance and Reason

Full Project Plan submitted to TLS August 16, 2019

Preliminary Findings report submitted to TLS

January 10, 2020

Participation in an ILI/TLS Preliminary Findings Roundtable dissemination event

February, 2020

Summary of Final Findings report submitted to TLS

August 21, 2020

Final Budget Accounting report submitted to TLS

August 21, 2020

Participation in an ILI/TLS PLIG Showcase dissemination event

November 2020

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DISSEMINATION PLAN (optional)

Provide details about the journals, conferences, shows, or other external vehicles with strong potential for dissemination of your results (in addition to the ILI/TLS Preliminary Findings Roundtable and PLIG Showcase dissemination events). Include supporting documentation, such as preliminary interest or acceptance, with your application, if available. (Please note that special consideration will be given to proposals that have a defined opportunity for external dissemination, such as an academic journal or professional conference.)

Our approach is a novel direction in facilitating collaborative decision making. This is a topic of interest in several sustainability and AI related conferences and journals. Based on our experiment with the students, we intend to submit a paper to one of the following venues:

Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB)

International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS)

The AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP) Further, based on the initial results obtained from this project, we intend to develop a larger NSF proposal.

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DEPARTMENT HEAD CERTIFICATION

I support this PLIG application and verify that the principal applicant is a full-time faculty member in good standing in my department.

Principal Applicant Name: Roger Chen

Department Head Name (PRINT): Thomas Trabold __________ Email:

Department Head Signature: ___________________________________________ Date: _______________

NOTE: When signed, please scan and email with your Application Form to: plig@rit.edu