The Innovation Fund
The Innovation Fund is supported solely by donors. Since the Fund was launched in 2012,
38 innovative ideas from Butler faculty and students have been funded.
The Center for Academic Technology was awarded a 2015 Innovation Fund grant for the
Promotion of eLearning through the Creation of a Lightboard Studio. Jeana Rogers and
Heather Hazelwood (Center for Academic Technology) are the project leads. Larry Darling,
Information Systems Analyst from IT along with student workers will build the Lighboard.
The Information Commons will assist staff from the Center for Academic Technology in
managing the Lightboard Studio.
The Future of eLearning at Butler & How to Get There with a Lightboard.
In order to take eLearning at Butler to the next level and make our online course content
even more engaging, we propose the creation of a new kind of video production
space – a Lightboard Studio. With the growing number of eLearning courses at Butler, an
Innovation Fund Grant would allow the Center for Academic Technology (CAT) to build a
Lightboard Studio in the basement of Irwin Library (Room 006) to enhance the eLearning
efforts at Butler. The Lightboard, developed in 2013 by Michael Peshkin of Northwestern
University allows the user to face the camera and write on a glass board and annotate images
or PowerPoint slides, or demonstrate physical concepts, just as you would in the
face-to-face classroom. Moreover, users do not have to learn to write backwards, the
technology flips the image! This proposed space will also be flexible enough to be a video
production studio that could create high quality videos using a green screen. Currently there is
no facility on campus where the Butler community can go to produce high
quality video for eLearning.