Funding Opportunities for Learning and Teaching Innovation
Briefing session recording
A Q&A and Briefing session took place on the 19 April 2023. You can watch the recording here.
A Teams site has been set up for staff members seeking collaborators. You can access this here.
We are running an open call for learning and teaching project proposals which have potential to be scalable and have impact widely in College.
As previously, this call draws together the Pedagogy Transformation Fund, the President’s Excellence Fund for Learning and Teaching Innovation and the Digital Innovation Fund. We are running a single unified call for all three funds.
Funding for projects of up to £50K each will be eligible for support from the President’s Excellence Fund for Learning and Teaching Innovation. Projects totalling £50K and over will be considered under the Pedagogy Transformation and Digital Innovation funding routes.
Proposals for projects should be submitted by 13:00 on Tuesday 9 May 2023.
Funding Priorities
Proposals are expected to further the College’s ambitions in one or more of these areas.
- To provide students with a learning experience that emphasises discovery and provides opportunities for cross-disciplinary work, further embedding our research into our education.
- To review and adapt the assessment and feedback approaches used in our educational programmes, reduce student and staff load, increase the authenticity of assessment, and improve the quality and/or timeliness of feedback.
- To further embed equality, diversity and inclusivity into the student experience and work with students to ensure that curriculum and assessment are fully inclusive.
- To propose digital Lifelong Learning opportunities that benefit our students, alumni and broader global community, particularly drawing on technology-driven delivery.
- To further embed sustainability and social responsibility into our programmes, particularly with reference to mapping our curricula against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
- To explore and develop innovative uses of emerging technologies (e.g., VR, XR, interactive media/simulations, AI, ML etc.) to enhance the College’s teaching, learning and assessment experience.
- To enable and enhance the College’s use of data (e.g., Learning Analytics) to enhance the student, candidate or alumni experience.
Funding Call Information
Who Can Apply?
We welcome applications from across the breadth of the College and its Faculties, Departments, Institutes, and teams. We are keen to particularly encourage:
- Multidisciplinary and cross-College proposals, including from Global Institutes
- Proposals with potential for pan-College impact, and/or integration with other established College projects
- Proposals which are developed with students as partners
What Can Funding Support?
In line with the College’s Learning and Teaching Strategy, the aim of the funding is to enable the realisation of creative new projects by providing resources and freeing-up time and space for staff to innovate, to develop and adapt known methods, and to introduce entirely new teaching methods while evaluating the effectiveness of these methods in the context of Imperial.
This funding call provides seed funding to allow staff to pilot projects and demonstrate potential for impact and integration across College. It is not anticipated that continuation funding will be available for projects funded via this call. Proposals are expected to outline plans for long-term sustainability, including how any required future funding will be sought (for example, via Faculty/Department buy-in or seeking external funding). Applications for funding must be supported by the Head(s) of Departments(s) or equivalent.
The resources needed to carry out a project will depend on local priorities, the scope, the size of the department/team and the extent to which the proposal develops entirely new activity or builds upon existing work.
Application Process and Assessment Criteria
The proposal form is available here: Funding Opportunities call for proposals 2023
Proposals should be submitted by 13:00 on Tuesday 9 May 2023 to ltstrategy@imperial.ac.uk
Funding will be available for projects starting in financial year 2023/24 and 2024/25, and will be available up to the end of the 2025/26 financial year.
Proposals will be reviewed by a panel of College educational leadership to establish a prioritised ‘long-list’ of fundable projects. Proposals will be assessed against the following criteria:
- Alignment to one or more of the funding priorities
- Potential to be scalable and have impact widely in College
- The educational rationale of the approach/project (e.g. framing of the project in context and theoretical underpinning)
- The strategy for evaluation of impact and effectiveness (using appropriate expertise and approaches)
- Depth (as appropriate) of student engagement, partnership and co-creation in design/implementation/evaluation
- Apparent cost-effectiveness of the proposal
- The plans to ensure long term sustainability
Following this, the ‘long-listed’ proposals will receive further review by specialist panels to ensure realistic costs and services have been accounted for.
A ‘short-list’ will then be established by the College educational leadership panel. Short-listed proposals will be supported to work with relevant teams to further develop their project plans, budget and evaluation approach ahead of final funding decisions. This development process will draw in specialist support from teams such as the Education Office, EDU, CHERS, Ed Tech Labs, Digital Media Lab, amongst others.
Further Support for Project Teams
Members of staff who are funded to work on approved projects will join a multidisciplinary community of staff and students who are engaged in the development, research and evaluation learning and teaching across College and the sector. Teams in receipt of funding will be encouraged to take an active role in this community by sharing project progress and outcomes at meetings, events and written communications.
Project teams will be able to tap into an extensive pool of colleagues with diverse and deep expertise and interests to help further develop their projects and will be supported though College networks and centres of expertise to build these links.
Those receiving funds are expected to take an evidence-based approach, evaluating innovation and change and ensuring that their work is informed by the educational research literature. Support to do this will be provided through opportunities to engage with professional development and networking opportunities provided by CHERS and the Education Office.