Research and Impact Fellowship recipients announced

The eCampus Center at Boise State University is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 eCampus Research and Impact Fellowship. These faculty members are investigating innovative, evidence-based practices to improve online teaching and learning, with topic areas including artificial intelligence, online student engagement, immersive digital simulations and open education.

The fellows' projects explore a range of timely topics. Each project aims to generate actionable insights that support high-quality online education, enhance student engagement and expand equitable access to learning.

Fellowship recipients

• Leslie Atkins, Professor, Teaching, Learning, and Community Engagement - Atkins' research explores how sustained engagement with AI-generated personas can deepen students' understanding and empathy toward diverse scientific workforce roles. Students will create and interact with personas that evolve over time, using AI to simulate professional narratives and funding decision-making in science policy contexts, and then analyze impacts on empathy and disciplinary awareness.
• Michelle Bennett, Associate Teaching Professor, College of Arts and Sciences - Bennett's research focuses on improving students' constructive conflict-resolution skills through the application and technology of AI-generated experiential simulations on the Wonda platform. The study specifically investigates the impact of utilizing simulated role-playing in this manner on student learning outcomes and practical application of conflict resolution.
• Yu-Hui Ching, Professor, Educational Leadership, Research, and Technology & Yu-Chang Hsu, Professor, Educational Leadership, Research, and Technology - In collaboration with Yu-Chang Hsu, Ching will continue an AI-focused study in EDTECH 202: Digital Tools for Teaching and Learning designed to develop pre-service teachers' critical thinking skills when engaging with AI for lesson planning. In this study, pre-service teachers will be guided to use AI tools to create lesson plan drafts and apply a detailed rubric to critically evaluate, revise, and adapt the content to their specific teaching contexts, as well as reflect on their use of AI.
• Jayne Josephsen, Professor, School of Nursing - Josephsen will create AI-generated experiential simulations using Wonda to enhance "soft skills" such as emotional intelligence. Piloted in NURS 422, the simulations will support consistent competency development and investigate student experience and efficacy.
• Darci McCall, Professor, School of Nursing - McCall's project centers on enhancing clinical simulation for online nursing students in NURS-RN 402: Vulnerable Populations - Critical Issues in Obstetrics. Building on a custom avatar that simulates patient interactions, she will integrate a digital video component to create immersive, realistic patient encounters. Her research will examine how these AI-driven simulations influence student engagement, learning, and confidence in communication and decision-making during emotionally sensitive conversations in fully remote nursing programs.
• Gemma Morawski, Adjunct Faculty, World Languages - Morawski integrates H5P interactive elements in her open textbook in Pressbooks, which are then embedded directly into Canvas to streamline student interaction with course activities and support wider adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). By embedding H5P activities this way, she hopes to improve ease of use, use selected H5P activities as graded work, and reduce barriers for instructors adopting OER tools. The impact of this work is to improve faculty resources for creating H5P for all instructors at Boise State.
• Margaret Sass, Lecturer III, College of Arts & Sciences - Sass' project examines how generative AI tools contribute to students' development of teamwork competencies in TEAM 303: Teamwork in the Digital Age. Using a pre-post quasi-experimental design, she will assess the influence of AI on students' communication, conflict skills, and collaborative engagement in digitally connected learning environments.
• Brett E. Shelton, Professor/Department Head, Educational Leadership, Research, and Technology - Shelton is conducting research on H5P interactives in open textbooks. Using an open text for the eSports certificate, he is exploring efficacy and student perceptions of H5P interactives. The impact on this work will result in understanding which aspects of H5P help with student success at Boise State.
• Hetal Vig, Adjunct Faculty, Genetic Counseling - Vig will develop an AI-driven standardized patient simulation for GENCOUN 549: Genetic Counseling, tailored to varied clinical scenarios and emotional states. The simulations will support students' communication skills, clinical reasoning, and empathetic engagement, complementing traditional standardized patient experiences.

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