Our students bring ideas to life through innovative final projects tailored to their chosen concentrations and professional goals. These projects serve as the capstone experience of the MEITE program, completed during the final summer session after students have engaged deeply with their coursework and internships. Throughout this process, students work closely with faculty mentors who provide guidance and support, helping ensure each project reflects both academic rigor and practical relevance.
Final projects vary by concentration and can include cutting-edge digital learning environments, comprehensive industry analyses, entrepreneurial ventures, and instructional design frameworks. This culminating work not only synthesizes the knowledge and skills gained throughout the program but also prepares students to make meaningful contributions to the fields of education and technology.
The program culminates with the annual Innovation Showcase, held on the last Friday of July, where students present their projects to an audience of UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and staff, industry partners, community members, and MEITE alumni and peers. The showcase offers a meaningful opportunity to share innovations, demonstrate applied learning, and celebrate the accomplishments of each graduating cohort.
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Examples of Student Work
Explore a selection of past projects that highlight the creativity, rigor, and real-world impact of MEITE graduates shaping the future of education and technology. Graduated students have graciously shared their work, with open-access projects linked directly and screenshots provided for those requiring user registration.
Students design a minimally viable prototype of an educational innovation — such as a product, service, or platform — alongside a detailed business and marketing plan to support its development and launch.
Dannielle Elison’s History in AR
Middle and high school students are currently taught in a segmented way, with each class they take focusing on one subject and a specific set of skills. Within this structure, students are given few opportunities to combine these subjects and skills to solve problems in a cross-curricular fashion, leading to a lack of confidence and an inability for solving real-world problems. This situation is then compounded as they leave the highly structured school experience and enter institutions of higher education or join the workforce. In response, History in AR Time is a web-based interactive timeline that is designed to provide 7th-12th grade students an engaging way to combine skills and knowledge that will allow them to make more profound, meaningful connections to history while solving real-world problems.
When using History in AR Time, students enter the timeline, choose an era, and can add various layers to explore deeper learning depending on their interests or needs. Students can examine subjects like science, sports, music, math, the arts, and more to understand how all these subjects work together to create history and culture. After exploring, they can complete gamified quests that challenge them to use various skills for solving real-world problems. History in AR Time is currently in the concept phase and will be ready with an MPV in the next 6-8 months to test with small groups of students.
Students explore a specific industry within the field of educational innovation and develop a two-part multimedia report. The first section examines the industry’s history, key trends, and leading organizations; the second offers a strategic market analysis and tailored recommendations for one of those organizations to expand its reach and impact.
Marina Shallcross’s An Analysis and Projection of AI in Education
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed education in the past decade, and its continued growth will shape how students learn and receive support. Currently, AI is used across all education disciplines to deliver personalized learning experiences, analyze student performance, and optimize educational outcomes.
A subfield of AI that is used in education is Natural Language Processing (NLP) which uses computational models to analyze text and speech for AI to both understand human speech and communicate using human speech patterns. Students are increasingly adopting AI applications that use NLP, like chatbots, for assistive and generative purposes.
An Analysis and Projection of AI in Education focuses on generative AI that uses NLP. This is a timely topic in education, as AI in education recently garnered attention with the creation of ChatGPT and Google Bard, AI-powered chatbots that can generate written responses within seconds using NLP. Through an analysis of current AI chatbots, this report will discuss current strengths and deficits and present opportunities for embedment within education. It will also focus on Chat GPT as an example for outlining the ways AI chatbots can be a threat to academic integrity and solutions to ensure ethical usage that can support student critical thinking and writing proficiency.
Students select a topic of interest and design a 10-module asynchronous course that integrates emerging technologies and innovative instructional strategies. The course is built to advance learners’ knowledge and skills aligned to clearly defined learning objectives.
Grace Willard’s Introduction to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace
Introduction to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace introduces users to equitable practices that they can use within the course to build an inclusive, diverse workplace. Organizations are focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, but the current marketplace does not support the practical application of interpersonal skills that support these initiatives. Research has found that even Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs lack adequate interpersonal skills instruction to prepare a workforce that can work collaboratively.
This course’s target users are individuals in workplaces that have adopted DEI goals and want to support these goals through learning and development programs. Users will learn about common issues that occur in workplaces, ways to resolve conflict that occurs in those contexts, and how the actions they take affect the whole workplace. users will understand basic definitions of DEI and practice specific interpersonal skills within Virtual Learning Environments using VR technology. By providing a virtual learning environment, it allows users to practice these skills through first-person perspective storytelling that adapts to their decisions through branching storylines.
The goal of this immersive learning environment is to promote experiential learning and strengthen engagement in the acquisition of interpersonal skills.
Students apply best practices in adaptive learning, instructional design, and data analysis to develop a five-module personalized learning experience. Each module features data-informed pathways that dynamically adjust to learner needs—supporting meaningful, individualized progress throughout the course.
Megan Buyer’s InstructSTEM: Rooting Practice in Pedagogy
STEM education is constantly evolving, and it is crucial for instructors to stay up to date with the latest educational best practices. Designed to help bridge the research-to-practice gap, InstructSTEM is a professional development course that provides a synthesized and accessible introduction to evidence-based pedagogical practices for high school and college STEM instructors.
The modules will cover a range of topics in the learning sciences along with instructional practices, identifying learner characteristics, and course development. The pace and content will be tailored to the instructors’ prior knowledge, performance, and interests. For example, instructors will take assessments prior to and after engaging in learning activities for each topic, and the corresponding activities will be modified based on their performance. Instructors will also develop deliverables relevant to the STEM content area(s) they teach and receive feedback and guidance from their peers and course facilitators.
This personalized and adaptive course has the potential to significantly improve STEM instruction by equipping instructors with the tools and knowledge needed to implement effective educational practices in their context and subsequently boost STEM student performance and retention.