More college students can chuck their notebook paper, number two pencils and lab manuals if they choose to take classes from two of our professors who have been awarded for innovative teaching.

Scott Christen, left, and Ismail Fidan

Ismail Fidan and Scott Christen accepted Innovation Awards at the recent Tennessee Board of Regents' 10th Annual Distance Education Conference for their contributions to Tennessee Tech students through creative and effective uses of technology.

Fidan, associate professor of Manufacturing and Industrial Technology, teaches in a field where hands-on experience is a must. He tackles common problems experienced by industrial technology students who take classes with lab assignments — lack of access and time with software and tools.

He has pushed for online access to manufacturing tools, including his department's rapid prototyping machine, a 3-D copier that produces a solid, physical model from a digital design sent to the machine from a computer. He oversees workshops for area high school science and technology teachers who want to learn the technology. He also recently received National Science Foundation funding to provide online access to the RP machine to students attending TBR institutions across the state.

"Remotely accessible laboratories are becoming increasingly popular, and we could eventually offer Internet-based controls, interactive tutorials and schedule time in our lab for students nationwide," says Fidan.

He also helped develop and test a tool to teach pre-K, kindergarten and first grade students about engineering concepts, famous engineers and engineering vocabulary. The project used photos and animations to introduce an online engineering alphabet along with virtual quizzes.

Fidan won the College of Engineering's 2004 Leighton E. Sissom Innovation and Creativity Award and serves as faculty adviser of our award-winning Society of Manufacturing Engineers student chapter.

Christen, instructor of English, teaches a variety of communication courses and received honors for his enthusiasm and sense of urgency in implementing technology to benefit his students.

“I was honored just to be nominated, so winning such a major distinction was really exciting,” he says.

A participant in the tablet computing initiative from our Institute for Technological Scholarship, Christen has been successful — in only two years of teaching at the university — in eliminating the use of paper in all his courses.

He also volunteers at the institute, where he spends approximately 12 hours each week helping other instructors to incorporate technology into their classrooms. He was nominated for this year's Exemplary Course Project award presented by the institute. One of his current projects involves working with two other professors to create hybrid communication courses for the fall 2006 semester.

An active member of the Tennessee Communication Association, Christen presented a talk about using the online course tool WebCT in communication classes at a recent conference.