PTF Impacts

On April 30, 2025, Guyot hosted a public poster session showcasing student projects focusing on datasets from the City of Austin Open Data Portal, held at the University of Texas at Austin. Projects ranged widely in focus, from environmental data to transportation and public safety, demonstrating the breadth of student inquiry and analysis.

Two presentations about promoting the use of a local open data portal for data science projects.

The first presentation was made with the collaboration of a former student/current UGCA at an event organized by Open Austin, which addresses local social and civic challenges through creative uses of technology.

The second presentation was made at the weekly statistics seminar at Texas State University with mostly professors in attendance.

Many of the final projects are available online:

https://hipstas.github.io/annotating-adler/

https://hipstas.github.io/gea-psychic-spirituality-recordings/

https://makaylabaughman.github.io/the-leigh-hunt-hair-book/

https://utancientamericas.omeka.net/ 

"Musings in Greek Literature" is a podcast co-produced by Prof. Deborah Beck and advanced UT undergraduate students of ancient Greek.

Dr. Berkin Dortdivanlioglu and I (Krishna Kumar) received a grant from the Cockrell School of Engineering to use AI for persoanlized tutors in our introduction to programming course. We have since built a personalized tutor for this course and is available for student privately. We are in the process of making the tutor public through TACC

To learn more about the Rigorously Compassionate initiative at UT Austin, which focuses on combining empathy with academic excellence, visit their website:
Rigorously Compassionate Program

Dr. Chen presented PTF project insights on the topic of internships at the following venue: 

Chen, W. (2024). U.S.-China AI Race and Global Professionals. Panel on GPT Asia, Texas Global, UT Austin.

This video project was designed to be shown in all Signature Courses at UT. Together with a discussion prompt, the video aims to acquaint students with mental and physical health resources on campus, and to teach them strategies for success.

Dr. Accosta, Dr. Castleberry, and colleagues presented a poster at a national pharmacy conference on the relationships between a student’s perceived preparedness before and after Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), OSCE grades, perception of their performance, pre-pharmacy and pharmacy GPAs, composite Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) score, and admission Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) scores.

Dr. Chen presented PTF project insights on the topic of internships at the following venue: 

Chen, W. (2024). Publishing in the Interdisciplinary fields. Invited Talk at the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of North Texas at Dallas.

3 different PTF projects presented:

Loescher project focuses on: Elevate excellence in the classroom through new strategies to understand, measure, and improve rigor in all courses 

•each class is designed and delivered with the expectation of students learning at high levels •each student demonstrates learning at high levels 

•each student is supported so they can learn at high levels

View the poster here

At the end of each semester, about 10 students volunteer to present their findings to the City of Austin employees during one of their regular data meetups.

Two promotional videos were created to highlight the impact of Pharmacy Practice Labs and collaboration with UT Athletic Training.

View the videos: Pharmacy Practice Labs and Partnership with UT Athletic Training

In 2024, I piloted a new web-based version of Astronomy 301 (Introductory to Astronomy), and taught it a second time in 2025. I attempted to include best practices for active learning, which was a challenge in this environment.

For more information about the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program at UT Austin, visit the program's webpage: DNP Program at UT Austin

A campus-wide faculty learning community constructed a canvas sandbox website where we could share materials related to climate change, with annotations, with the broader UT community. We collected our groups materials, and tried to organize them in a useful way. This includes lectures, activities, quizzes, projects, pre/post tests, etc. We organize both by learning objective, and by course. Our website is now live. A publication on pre/post survey results is being prepared.

As part of their PTF initiative's goal of creating protocols and resources to better streamline the creation and regular updating of course materials, Osier created this Stock Images Database in Airtable to collect sources of free, online images featuring a broader spectrum of body types, skin colors, and other key elements which are vital to medical education.

Each year, the PTF Chair-Elect has the opportunity to share recurring Teaching Tips with all faculty at UT. These messages cover a variety of topics, styles, and methodologies, from brief and practical classroom strategies to in-depth conversations with voices from across campus.

This year’s Teaching Tips  were written by Chair-Elect Nina Telang, from the Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

This profile of "Musings in Greek Literature" appeared in the Spring 2023 edition of Life and Letters, the magazine of the UT College of Liberal Arts. This article explores the podcast and its origins, which occurred spontaneously in a conversation with Adam Rabinowitz about experiential learning. At the time, Adam was a PTF, but I wasn't. I re-applied multiple times to the PTF program and was ultimately selected for this podcast project in large part because of Adam's support and encouragement.

As part of their PTF initiative's goal of creating protocols and resources to better streamline the creation and regular updating of course materials, Nico Osier created this Trauma-Informed Course Auditing Checklist in Airtable to streamline the process of ensuring their lectures and course materials are responsive to research-backed best practices in trauma-informed teaching. Osier's Auditing Checklist was designed with Nursing and Health Sciences courses in mind, but can be adapted for instructors in virtually any field.

As part of their PTF initiative's goal of creating protocols and resources to better streamline the creation and regular updating of course materials, Osier created this Bitmoji Database to keep track of the icons they use throughout their course materials and slides to create consistency and systematize their creation and editing processes. This Database can be used as a template for other instructors who are interested in using Bitmoji or other icons and symbols in their course materials, and once copied can be easily edited to fit the individual instructor's needs.

For an article on the concept of the social classroom, exploring its impact on student interactions and learning, check out this piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Social Classroom.

Life and Letters, the print and digital magazine of the UT College of Liberal Arts, featured ClioVis, the digital timeline visualization tool developed by Erika Bsumek's PTF initiative, in their November 2023 issue.