As an all-faculty meeting began to wrap up at Central Methodist University on Wednesday, March 6, Dori Waggoner was called to the front of the room for a special honor.
Waggoner, who is an associate professor of music and chair of the Division of Fine Arts, was the recipient of Central’s first Innovation Award – a newly-created accolade that will go to one faculty member a month over three months.
The award is designed around Central’s Digital U – an initiative introduced at the university in 2018 that provides undergraduate Fayette campus students with an Apple iPad, loaded with apps and other features to advance skills and expertise. Every CMU classroom and lab features an Apple TV, so students and professors can sync their iPads for presentations, file sharing, and other forms of collaboration and learning.
Waggoner has been developing students’ listening skills and enhancing their openness to music outside their normal experiences. For each week of the semester, she created a Listening Exploration file in a commonly used note-taking app for CMU Digital U students – Notability.
“It allows me to record music while highlighting appropriate items on a listening map so students can read what is happening while they are hearing it,” Waggoner said. “Also included are ‘thoughts to ponder’ and vocabulary.”
Because of this advanced tool, Waggoner said she is able to address an educational dilemma that she had only been marginally successful in solving in a “pencil and paper” context.
“The iPad allows me to present the material to students in a new way that requires less class time because they can easily engage with the material outside of class, and it seems to be paying off in student engagement and learning.”
Chad Gaines, vice president for technology and planning at CMU, presented Waggoner with her award.
“Dori’s very creative approach in the classroom is just another example of how our faculty are finding innovative ways to engage students,” he said. “It’s what sets the Central Methodist Digital U experience apart from other institutions.”