Good Practice Case Study

Funding Teaching Innovation - Faculty of Education

Contributed by: Associate Professor Brian Ferry

Abstract:

By offering Teaching Innovations Sub-committee Grants, the Faculty encourages staff to innovate and develop projects that will contribute to learning and teaching in the Faculty.

Aims:

• To encourage staff that have innovative ideas about teaching and learning to plan, implement and evaluate their ideas.

Context:

The Faculty of Education has 50.1 full time academic staff, 21 casual staff and 1180 students across 7 programs. Outcomes:

Innovations under the grants scheme have been very diverse. Recent examples include:

The restructuring and development of Professional Development Modules for School Leaders for delivery online as well as face to face Development of postgraduate IT subjects for on-line flexible delivery. Quality Teachers Delivering Quality Teaching - A professional development program for beginning PDHPE teachers from the University of Wollongong Towards An Integrated Model Of Teacher Education: Integrating First Year Primary Subjects Through Problem Based Learning & Portfolio Assessment Enhancing Intercultural Communication Opportunities for Education Postgraduate Students

Other outcomes include:

• Academic staff have received recognition and the opportunity to develop innovative teaching ideas
• Academic staff have been supported to overcome particular problems in delivering subjects and courses
• Members of staff have published papers and presented at conferences on their innovations

What was done?

Overview

• A number of teaching innovation grants are offered by the Faculty. These are administered by the Teaching Innovations Sub-committee (TISC) of the Faculty Education Committee.
• The Sub-committee calls for applications three times during the year by email.
• Staff lodge a written application.
• A selection process is carried out to determine which applications to fund.
• Project results must be published and shared with others.

Funding

• In the Faculty budget an amount is allocated to the teaching grants scheme each academic year with another amount allocated to encourage research. Decisions made with regard to the amounts available for each of the grant areas are based on the priorities for the Faculty and are mutually agreed on. As a result, the total amount allocated to the Teaching Innovations Sub-committee grants will vary from year to year, but is typically $20-$30,000 per annum. The budget is provided by the Dean and administered by the Faculty Finance Officer.
• The individual grant amounts are usually up to $3000-$4000, which the recipient can use in a variety of ways. For example, research support for a new teaching innovation, teaching relief to create a new approach to teaching or to pay for the use of particular skills needed for a project eg. Web page development.
• The amounts are kept small to ensure that as many suitable projects as possible get started and are on track before any more financial support is given. People can apply again if they need to fund further stages but to gain additional finds they need to show that they have made a demonstrable impact on student learning.
• A CEDIR project manager is also a member of the TISC committee and advises on the most effective use of CEDIR resources. This avoids any unnecessary duplication of resources and provides an additional source of ideas.

Support for applicants

• Calls for applications are by email. The email provides information about grant requirements and encourages applicants to talk to a Sub-committee member before applying.
• Applicants complete a simple form which covers: the purpose of the project; what they hope to achieve; a budget and their plans for publication and dissemination of their work.
• Applicants are encouraged to seek comments on drafts from committee members before making a formal application.
• The Sub-committee also organises forums to discuss changes within the education system. Recent forums have included one on teaching standards and another on quality teaching, with guests from the University of NSW and the Department of Education and Training. These forums are designed to stimulate ideas for grant applications.

Selection

• In deciding which innovations to fund, the Sub-committee looks for: innovation (i.e. something that hasn``t been done before, or a new approach); how will the project contribute to innovative teaching and learning across the Faculty; does the project involve collaboration across programs, disciplines and specialisations; and how the applicant plans to publish and report back their results.
• In the past few years, the use of ICTs was also a major criterion, but this is no longer the case as the use of ICT in the Faculty has been steadily increasing.
• Initiatives at both undergraduate and postgraduate level are supported
• Recipients can be academic staff of any level, with new and junior academic staff encouraged to apply.
• No application is rejected out of hand. If the Sub-committee receives an application that they are unwilling to fund, a meeting is convened to discuss the areas of the application that were unclear or unsupported. Applicants are encouraged to review these areas and apply again in the future. As a result, most people are successful after reapplying.
• There is a requirement that on completion of the project, the results are published and disseminated.

Project completion and sharing results

• Sub-committee members may help applicants work out details, or put them in touch with those who can offer the best advice and expertise
• A requirement of accepting a grant is to publish the findings and share them with the Faculty. This sharing has included Faculty seminars or a written summary of the innovation that other members of the Faculty can use to inform their teaching. It is our intention to put this information up on web pages in the future
• The Sub-committee reports to the Faculty Education Committee during the year and provides a list of the funded projects.

Key dates:

• The grants scheme has been operating since 2002 and is ongoing.
• The Sub-committee meets three to four times a year, with an email going out three weeks before each meeting.

Critical success factors:

• Keeping the application process simple, but still rigorous enough to ensure quality
• Flexible thinking by the Sub-committee. Innovative projects can be very different - it is important not to be too directive or try to predefine what types of projects are innovative.
• Requiring a clear link to outcomes for student learning
• No rejection of ideas out of hand. If an idea could possibly contribute to student learning, strategies are suggested as to how it could be reshaped.
• Choosing members of the Sub-committee for their strong interest in teaching, their diversity, their realistic approach and their ability to give applicants practical advice on how to address student learning difficulties
• Keeping the Sub-committee small - around 5-6 members
• Support from the Faculty Officer in following up, taking minutes and keeping the processes on track.

Review and improvement:

• The Sub-committee would like to put more time into supporting projects once they have started, eg give more support and mentoring to the funded academics and act as a sounding board as they are thinking through their ideas. Support from the Faculty Officer has freed up the time of Sub-committee members to some extent, but lack of time is still an issue.
• There is a limited amount of money available. This has been managed by giving small amounts for stages of projects. As a result, the Sub-committee has been able to allocate something to all projects that are deserving of funding.

Future plans:

• To share some of the project results across the University as well as within the Faculty. A series of seminars will be organised around some successful projects in the second half of 2004.
• The role of Chair will be rotated, to encourage diversity of approach and innovation within the Sub-committee.
• A formal evaluation will be carried out in 2005.