Manchester Metropolitan University

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is inviting expressions of interest from individuals to contribute to an HEA STEM project: Skills in Mathematics and Statistics in the Disciplines and Tackling Transition. Funding in the range £3K to £5K will be on offer for project participants, depending on the level of involvement. This will be agreed in advance before the work starts.

Who can apply?

We are seeking academic subject specialists with recent direct experience of working with undergraduate students on the development of their mathematical and/or statistical skills within the context of their discipline in higher education. A knowledge and understanding of the literature relating to the current challenges in this area within their discipline is essential. Experience of research techniques will be required.
Availability to undertake a substantial part of the work between September 2012 and November 2012 is essential.

What does the work involve?

The work involves producing a report aimed at a specific discipline subject community that will look at students’ mathematical and statistical skills within the subject area. The report should include a review of current literature and may involve some component of survey work. Information about the report content will be provided to project participants before the work commences. This report will form the basis of a discussion event organised by the HEA which will bring together key players from the HE and secondary sectors working in the discipline. The author will be expected to attend and contribute to this event and document key findings. The subject areas which are being considered in the current phase of the project are: Business, Chemistry, Computing, Economics, Geography, Psychology and Sociology.

Some subject areas will be treated in more depth than others. At all stages project participants will be required to work collectively and collaboratively with members of the HEA project team.

How to apply

Individuals interested in contributing to this work should complete an expressions of interest form, and email it to SkiMaSt.TT@heacademy.ac.uk by Friday 7 September 2012.
If you have any questions, please contact the HEA Discipline Lead in your subject area.

Call for Applications (closing date: March 31 2010)

Further details and application forms on the SRHE website

Each year the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) invites applications from Newer Researchers to enter a research proposal for a small scale project under an SRHE Prize scheme. All entries are reviewed by an expert panel; the successful SRHE prize winner receives a number of benefits from the Society in addition to the prize money awarded to fund the project selected. Entry is open to all and not restricted to current SRHE Members. The SRHE Prize for Newer Researchers is jointly sponsored by SRHE and the Taylor & Francis Group.

In 2010 there will be two prizes of £3,000 available for a research project of one year’s duration. These awards are intended to provide support for early stage researchers in the field of higher education research to enable them to:

• undertake a study that will prepare the ground for a larger
  project
• develop research skills which will help advance their research
  career.

Benefits of the Awards

The primary purpose of these awards is to offer support to Newer Researchers intending to pursue a career in higher education research by providing funding for an initial research project and offering access to the resources of the Society. Successful award holders are provided with the support of a mentor and, for UK based applicants, invited to become a member of the Society’s prestigious Research & Development Committee which affords a wider involvement in higher education research developments.

Value of the Awards

The SRHE Prize for Newer Researchers provides:-

• £3,000 ( 4 equal payments paid quarterly)
• the support of an SRHE senior researcher as mentor
• publication by the Society of a paper on the research project
  undertaken
• presentation of the final paper at SRHE PGNR Conference
• one year’s full free membership of the SRHE
• one years free subscription to the Society’s main journals, Studies
  in Higher Education, Higher Education Abstracts & Higher Education Quarterly.

Eligibility

Eligible researchers are those with a minimum of a first undergraduate degree and currently registered as a student with, or undertaking research associated with, a university or college department and with a career interest in higher education research. These awards are not available to support study towards a postgraduate qualification or to support research work intended as the basis for a PhD submission. To qualify you should be within 6 years of the completion of your PhD or equivalent professional standing. This time limit excludes any formal career breaks taken for family responsibilities.

Further details and application forms on the SRHE website

The Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Educationis offering fellowships worth £3000 each :

• To reward staff who show commitment to their own professional development and the enhancement of students’ learning experiences in line with the educational vision that underpins this policy
• To encourage and support development of curricular and other experiences that seek to combine and integrate learning from academic, work and other life experiences
• To promote collaborative learning within and outside the University of Surrey so that what is learned through the Fellowship can be adapted to other contexts across the HE Sector.

For more information, see the Sceptre website.

There is a new JISC call for small-scale, short-term funding announced yesterday.  Projects are for a maximum of 6 months (to b complete by November 2009) with between £15K and £40K per project, with a total of 30 being funded nationally.

The priority areas are in:

• Mashups of open data
• Aggregating tags and feeds
• Semantic web/linked data
• Data search
• Visualisation
• Personalisation
• Mobile Technologies
• Lightweight Shared Infrastructure Services
• User Interface Design

Please note the funding is intended for technical as opposed to pedagogic projects, so the funding is primarily intended for the development of artefacts, pieces of codes, software etc.

The funding cannot be used to employ new staff so it could be used, for example, to buy out an existing member of staff’s time for 6 months to undertake a piece of work.

If you would like to have a chat about this call please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The deadline for submissions is tight – April 22nd, but a lightweight application process is being applied

Further details

Dr Neil Ringan (n.ringan@mmu.ac.uk)
Principal Lecturer in Learning Technologies
Centre for Learning & Teaching

 

HEFCE has launched a grant programme to research, develop and evaluate institutional practice relating to links between higher education institutions, schools, colleges and academies. Applications are to be made by Friday 27 February 2009.

 In October 2008, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Department for Children, Schools and Families jointly published ‘National Council for Educational Excellence:recommendations

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/circlets/2009/cl01_09/

The document places further emphasis on the need for the higher education sector to work with schools and academies. School-HE links, including links with colleges, are widely regarded as critical to the success of national strategies designed to raise the attainment of learners, widen participation and promote learner progression to the full range of HE available. 

We recognise that the development of sustainable school-HE relationships can be a complex process. We wish to offer grants to selected institutions to undertake research that will provide evidence of effective practice in models of school-HE links. Once identified and fully researched, we will provide opportunities for those models to be discussed by the HE sector so that individual institutions can select and then apply those aspects that are most appropriate to their needs and strategic priorities.

During 2009 up to 10 projects will each receive between £40,000 and £60,000 to research, develop and evaluate the nature, scope and cost effectiveness of sustainable models of school-HE relationships. Following the completion of the research, we will subsequently provide funding for three of the 10 projects to develop practice further over two years. Each project will receive an additional £60,000 to £80,000.

Please note that this invitation for proposals is for the first phase of the research only. We expect to receive proposals by Friday 27 February 2009 and the projects to begin by 1 April 2009. We expect to receive the reports by 28 August 2009.

The National Teaching Fellowship Scheme Individual Awards aim to:

• raise the profile of learning and teaching
• recognise and celebrate individuals who make an outstanding impact on the student learning experience
• provide a national focus for institutional teaching and learning excellence schemes.

The awards are increasingly competitive and last year more than 200 individuals from HEIs across the UK were nominated for the 50 awards of 10,000 GBP. Each HEI is allowed to nominate three individuals for the award.

If you are interested in being nominated by MMU for the award, please read the guidelines at the HEA website at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/professional/ntfs/individual

The first stage of the application will be to ensure nomination by MMU. To this end, please provide evidence (in bullet points at this stage) to show how you match each of the three criteria stated in the guidelines (no more than 1 side of A4 for each criterion). Please email this document to Liz Murphy in CeLT (e.a.murphy@mmu.ac.uk) no later than 5th January 2009. A panel, chaired by Professor Ann Holmes, PVC for Learning and Teaching, will decide which candidates will be nominated by MMU. These candidates will be supported by CeLT in their full applications, for which the deadline is 4th March 2009. If you require further information about the awards and/or the nomination procedure please contact Maureen Dawson (m.m.dawson@mmu.ac.uk) in CeLT.

ESCalate, the HEA subject centre for Education, is offering research grant funding in 2009 on the topic of Assessment. This fits nicely with the MMU Challenging Assessment agenda, of course but in this case the funding is only available to support students on Education courses.

More information is available on the ESCalate website. Help with writing bids is available from Maureen Dawson or Rachel Forsyth in CeLT.

HEA Academy Subject Centre for Bioscience

One of the Centre’s themes this year is plagiarism (Assessment, Feedback and Plagiarism) and we are keen to gather examples of the initiatives people have introduced to design out plagiarism rather than to just detect it. If you have done some work on this let us know, using the open call case study proforma available on our website. Accepted case studies will be added to the Centre website and may be printed and distributed in hard copy format by the Centre. The first author of each accepted case study will be eligible to receive a small payment of £100. If you are working on another topic which you think the Centre would be interested in then consider using the open call proforma to let us know about it.

Further details

JISC invites institutions to submit funding proposals for projects to undertake work under the second round of its Learning and Teaching Innovation Grants Programme.

JISC wishes to fund one year projects and activities that fit with the vision, outcomes and principles of the JISC e-Learning programme and support innovative approaches to learning and teaching. This is an open call, and projects dealing with any aspect of e-learning are welcomed. To reduce the initial investment in time and resource needed to develop a traditional JISC proposal and to encourage speculative and innovative ideas from the community bidders are invited to submit outline proposals online.

Funds of up to £75,000 for projects of one year duration are available.
The next deadline for submissions is 12 January 2008.
Please note: The lead institution may only submit one proposal per assessment point.
The full text of the Circular, guidance material and a bid template form for can be found at the following link: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2008/04/circular408.aspx
Bids should be submitted by email to ELEARNING-BIDS@JISC.AC.UK, using the template provided.

Further details