The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) is pleased to announce Dr. Jay Brown and Dr. Kalpana Pai as the winners of the Spring 2014 mini-grant competition for research in critical thinking, teaching and learning. 

Both faculty members will use the funds to incorporate gamification elements into their courses. These elements will ask students to engage in critical thinking and analytic reasoning. 

Dr. Pai plans to include an accounting game, Ledger Mania, in her Financial Accounting class. Ledger Mania is an educational board game designed for use in the financial accounting classroom.

“My hope is to get students actively engaged in problem solving and have them apply their critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills in class,” said Pai.

Dr. Brown is currently working on a research project with four undergraduate students exploring whether the cognitive mechanisms that are responsible for helping us exhibit self-control are the same mechanisms that allow us to exhibit social-cooperation.

The mini-grant will be used to create an updated computer game that will aid this research project.

CETL is happy to support these professors in their efforts to incorporate both gamification and critical thinking within their classroom. Congratulations, Kalpana and Jay!