How nice would it be to have time to put your ideas for improvement or innovation of your course into practice? Apply for additional funds by submitting an outline of your improvement/innovation plan for your course running in 2023-2024 by 1 October 2023.
Per proposal, 80 hours of additional student assistance or academic staff time can be awarded (in case of higher complexity up to 120 hours and for multiple applications to 160 hours at max). These hours can be used by staff to develop the improvement or innovation (structural teaching hours for the implementation of the innovation lie beyond the scope of these funds).
In previous rounds between 67% and 100% of submissions were awarded, so there is a good chance for your ideas as well. Please note that there will be one final call after this one, in early 2024, so if you have an idea to innovate your course there will be one more opportunity after this one to apply for these funds.
Themes to focus on
These funds are provided as part of the Quality Agreements (‘Onderwijskwaliteitsmiddelen’) and are meant to boost innovation and improvement in teaching and learning in Social Sciences. Together with students and staff (e.g., FSR, OC) we defined themes for 2019-2024 to focus on. Therefore, the objectives of your proposal should match one or more of the following themes:
- provide more variety in learning activities (‘werkvormen’)
- strengthen collaborative learning amongst students (‘samenwerkend leren, samenwerking in teams’)
- (re)develop challenging work groups and/or work group assignments (‘uitdagend werkgroeponderwijs’)
- reinforce students' self-direction/autonomy (‘zelfsturing, autonomie’)
- enhance blended learning
- establish formative assessment in your course (‘formatief handelen’)
Proposals are taken into consideration if (1) the program director supports the plan, (2) you explain how and at what point students will be involved in the development and evaluation of the plans and (3) good practices and lessons learned in the project will be shared with fellow teachers in the faculty. Precedence will be given to courses and teachers that have not yet been awarded funds in previous rounds, but all proposals meeting the above requirements will be taken into consideration.
Dissemination
Those awarded funds for their project have a responsibility to share the results of the project with colleagues and other interested parties within the faculty. We will contact you at the end of the project to further discuss the possibilities and to help you with this. Possible options are:
- Live session: TIP support session, teacher lunch meeting or other live meeting
- Fact sheet or infographic about the design and execution of the course: to be shared in FSW Teachers on Brightspace and through the common communication channels of the faculty
- Interview: to be shared in FSW Teachers on Brightspace and through the common communication channels of the faculty.
Procedure
Please fill out the form and submit your proposal by 1 October 2023 to managing assistant Jolanda van Os, jolanda.vanos [at] ru.nl (jolanda[dot]vanos[at]ru[dot]nl)
Should you have questions about this call, please contact the director of education, Mariska Kleemans (Mariska.kleemans [at] ru.nl (Mariska[dot]kleemans[at]ru[dot]nl)). It is also highly recommended to contact Veerle van Pinxteren Veerle.vanpinxteren [at] ru.nl (Veerle[dot]vanpinxteren[at]ru[dot]nl), the educational advisor of TIP, when preparing your proposal.
Next call for funding
The next and provisionally final call for these innovation funds will be in April 2024.