Provost's Office announces five DELTA Awards recipients

The Johns Hopkins Provost's Office has announced the five recipients of its 2024 Digital Education and Learning Technology Acceleration (DELTA) Awards, which offer grants of up to $75,000 to JHU educators seeking to enhance student learning through innovative digital technology.

This year's winning proposals, picked from a pool of 28 submissions, will receive a total of $364,000. In the seven years since its creation, the DELTA Awards program has distributed more than $2.6 million in funding to 41 awardees, enhancing education both within and outside the university.

"There's a deep well of pedagogical ingenuity here at JHU," says Ira Gooding, Senior Adviser for Digital Initiatives. "Each year, I'm thoroughly impressed and inspired by the new ideas and creative solutions that DELTA brings to the surface. I'm thrilled that these five teams now have funding to further develop, implement, and evaluate their innovations in service of the university's educational mission."

This year's DELTA awardees are:

HealthGuard: Enhancing Cybersecurity in Healthcare through AI and VR-Driven Gamified Training

Principal investigators: Javad Abed, Carey Business School; Anton Dahbura, Whiting School of Engineering; Shih-Chun (David) Lin, School of Medicine

The investigators will launch HealthGuard, a cybersecurity training program for healthcare professionals that uses artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and gamification to create an immersive educational experience.

Teaching and Training Modules for Translational Neurosurgery Research

Principal investigator: Betty Tyler, School of Medicine

To complement in-person laboratory training at the Hunterian Neurosurgical Laboratory, the investigator will create digital education opportunities in the form of interactive modules that prioritize inclusivity and accessibility.

Collaborative Data Science Learning Environment for Learners Outside of Core-Computation Disciplines

Principal investigator: Tom Lippincott, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering

The investigators will develop and evaluate a computational learning environment that makes computational and data science skills accessible for students in the humanities and social sciences.

Learning Analytics for Engineering Design Education: Tracking Time on Tasks to Encourage Self-Organization Skills in Undergraduate Engineering Students

Principal investigators: Constanza Miranda and Nusaybah Abu-Mulaweh, Whiting School of Engineering

Looking to encourage the development of self-regulation and task-management skills in undergraduate students, the investigators will create and pilot an automated version of time-on-task measurements in an engineering-design course.

Practical Magnetic Resonance Imaging for All: Learning Through Building and Playing

Principal investigators: Sairam Geethanath, School of Medicine; Hanzhang Lu, Whiting School of Engineering; Steven Ross and Jennifer Morrison, School of Education

The investigators aim to reduce worldwide barriers to accessing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology through open-source hardware and software educational tools that allow students to build and experiment with their own educational MR scanner.