The Oxford Centre for Academic Enhancement and Development (OCAED) invites colleagues involved in teaching and supporting learning to take up the challenge to Transform Academic Practice (TAP). Can you, as educational stakeholders, use this small pot of funding to find a solution to a specific pedagogic puzzle that enhances or develops academic practice in your discipline, Faculty or the whole University?
Funding amount and time to complete: You can apply for funding of between £500 and £1,250. The projects should take from 12 to 24 months to complete. We aim to award one funding pot per Faculty.
Eligibility: We welcome applications from colleagues at all career stages, from all academic departments, and all professional service areas. We are particularly keen to receive proposals from colleagues who haven’t done anything like this before. However, please note that to be eligible applicants must hold HEA professional recognition (Fellow or Associate, Senior or Principal Fellow) or have a submission date for their Fellowship application.
Student involvement: You must include students in your project team and show how you will involve students at all stages of your project. OCAED Student Curriculum Consultants will be available to support and advise projects. Their role description and person specification should be used as a template to simplify the process of student recruitment.
Alignment with IDEAS: Projects should explicitly align with and address one or more elements of the IDEAS model:
- Inclusive Learning
- Digital Inclusion
- Employability Learning
- Assessment for, as and of learning
- Sustainability Mindset
The benefits of participation are opportunities to:
- address a TAP challenge from your context and with your community;
- gain experience in pedagogic research and evaluation;
- present and publish Scholarship of Teaching and Learning;
- manage a small research budget (budgets are released incrementally, as project milestones are met);
- be part of a supportive TAP challenge community that provides peer mentoring;
- contribute to transforming academic practice at Oxford Brookes;
- gather evidence in support of recognition as an educational leader, i.e. evidence that can contribute to an application for Senior Fellow of the HEA and to career progression.
Items that can be funded (not an exhaustive list):
- The payment of student partners to collaborate on the project (a compulsory element of all projects).
- The cost of producing exemplar materials to support or enhance academic practice. These should also be made available digitally, for download. Take a look at how the Scholarly Communications team can help via this page).
- Specialist help or training to further project objectives.
- The payment of a specific person to host focus groups. We recommend the use of someone who is already a student at or employed by Oxford Brookes. This could be the role of one of the student partners for example.
- Attendance at an external (to Brookes) event to disseminate findings and any resources created. This might be a relevant conference. Student partners must be given the opportunity to attend; if there are limited places that can be funded or accessed please ensure equitable representation. Please note: this is in addition to dissemination within Brookes (see below).
Expectations:
Fund holders are required to share their work with the wider University community, e.g. through relevant departmental and University newsletters, social media and through contributions to Teaching Insights or Talking Teaching webinars.
Projects teams are expected to submit proposals and to present at the annual Brookes Learning and Teaching Conference.
At the conclusion of the project you will provide a brief report (there will be a template), including details of how the funding was spent.
Briefing sessions that will enable you to orientate yourself, begin to scope out your project, and perhaps find others who have your interests, will be announced shortly.
Drop in sessions will be scheduled so that you can ask questions specific to your application.
Following the award of funding further support will be available to successful project teams in fine-tuning and running their projects.