CALL FOR PROPOSALS - SUBMISSION DEADLINE HAS PASSED
The Center for Teaching and recently invited UT Austin instructors to develop or scale innovations in their teaching/courses. Submitted proposals are now being reviewed. The call for 2024-2025 will be announced towards the end of 2023.
Innovations mean very different things depending on the course and the instructor and we hope to encourage you to pursue something that is new FOR YOU. These grants are to give instructors at all levels, time over the summer to develop something new in a course to be taught either Fall 2023 or Spring 2024. The grantee will be awarded $3,000 to work on their innovation over the summer semester, and will submit a report with the planned innovation. A reflection report will be submitted after the innovation has been implemented and we request the recipients facilitate a short workshop in the Spring to present findings to other faculty.
FOCUS: PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE TEACHING
The Center for Teaching and Learning’s mission is to drive innovation focusing on teaching for student success. To that end, we have curated a set of Eight Principles of Effective Teaching that can be used as a framework to innovate teaching methodologies. These principles were constructed through synthesizing recent research on best practices to increase student learning and support student success with input from various faculty committees. To enable instructors to have time to develop areas of their courses that they wish to innovate, the Center for Teaching and Learning is offering a summer stipend to instructors who choose one or more of the principles from the Eight Principles of Effective Teaching they wish to develop in one of their courses. Here are the eight principles with some examples of how they might be utilized to innovate your course.
- Deliberate and intentional planning: e.g. aligning course design, diversifying resources, identifying barriers and developing solutions
- Construction of knowledge: e.g. scaffolding learning, choosing resources that are more accessible or affordable
- Active engagement in learning: e.g. developing activities that help students understand more deeply
- Relevance to disciplinary experiences: e.g. experiences that help students think like a practitioner
- Use of assessment data and feedback: e.g. developing a variety of methods to assess student learning or give feedback
- Shared responsibility for learning: e.g. giving more responsibility to students for their own learning
- Learning from peers: e.g. developing projects where students learn together
- Establish and support a class climate that fosters belonging for all students: e.g. adapting materials and resources that students can identify with
SELECTION CRITERIA
Proposals are evaluated by a review committee of past recipients that will score proposals on the following factors.
- Quality of design – goals, scope, plan
Proposals should clearly state the Principle from the Eight Principles of Effective Teaching that has been chosen, explain the innovation to their course and its potential impact on student learning. The proposal should identify goals, describe a plan that will meet them, and include measurements of success.
- IMPACT
These grants are intended to have an impact on student learning and success. High-scoring proposals will include the quality of the innovation to the course and documentation of the process that students experience throughout the course including successes and obstacles. (For example, through journals, blog posts, photographs, video, student products etc.) Include the impact of the innovation to your course that, without this grant, would otherwise not occur.
- PLANS FOR DISSEMINATION
It will be an expectation that grantees document their student learning and submit a brief final report on their reflections and assessment of results. This can be in written or video format. After the course has been taught, awardees will develop a short presentation of the process and student experience to share with other instructors by giving short half hour presentations on what they learned and how their innovation can be used by other instructors. Innovations that can be utilized by other instructors are especially welcomed.
HOW TO APPLY
Any UT Austin instructor, individually or in teams, may submit a proposal. Applications must be submitted for review by Monday, March 20, 2023. During the first half of Spring Semester you can join this year’s successful grantees in a Zoom call to find out what they proposed, what they learned and how that might be useful to other instructors. This might give you ideas for a proposal, and give you an opportunity to ask questions about the grant. See the CTL calendar for dates and times.
FINANCIAL STIPULATIONS
$3000 will be awarded for work to be completed in the Summer semester 2023. Other small amounts of necessary funding will be considered (make this clear in your application), such as research assistants, materials or supplies or other necessary costs including publications, meeting costs, or conference participation consistent with relevant departmental, college, or University policy, Regents’ rules, and Texas state law.
2022-2023 Grantees
Maura Borrego
Mechanical Engineering
Disability Accommodations in Engineering
Chikako Cooke
Asian Studies
Creating OER Japanese 1st Year Language Materials
Milica Cudina
Mathematics
A Fresh Approach to Financial Mathematics for Actuaries
Maggie Gemmell
Germanic Studies
Redesigning Online German Courses to Promote Engaging Asynchronous Language Use
M.J. Johns
Computer Science
How to Teach a 200 person Class like a 20 Person Class
Cynthia LaBrake
Molecular Biosciences
Using Canvas New Quizzes to build assessment of program learning outcomes into course level assessments
Ji Ma
LBJ School of Public Affairs
Studying the knowledge interaction in different languages using computational social science methods
Viranga Perera
Physics
Developing On Location Videos to Showcase Authentic Physics Applications in the Biomedical Sciences
Veronica Young
Center for Health Interprofessional Practice and Education
Preparing Health Professions Learners for Dual Identify Development Using the Interprofessional Socialization Framework