Erin Bowen, assistant professor in Technology Leadership and Innovation, received the Purdue Award for Excellence in Distance Learning in April 2012. She received this award for her outstanding efforts in her Measurement and Evaluation for Industry and Technology course, offered for online graduate degrees by the Center for Professional Studies in Technology and Applied Research (ProSTAR) master’s program.
Bowen designed this statistics course to be easily accessible and understood by the students who were taking the class from all over the United States and some from overseas. She utilized Blackboard, the course’s management website, to host discussions and created her recorded lectures with statistical humor.
She even designed group projects, so that students could work with the material as a team. By using both audio and video to explain how to use the course’s software or to show an equation with common student mistakes, Bowen made the dispersed students feel connected to the course, which is the most difficult goal of distance learning.