Author: John Milton

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University

Keywords: grant writing, writing grant proposals, National Teaching Development Grant Scheme (CAUT, Australia)

Contents

• Purpose and use of this guide
• On what basis are you applying?
• Applying for a grant - the key principles and themes
• Some specific issues on matters of detail
• After applying, where to from here?
• References

Purpose of this guide

Aim

The guide offers suggestions which will help teachers decide whether to apply, how to research and develop a teaching initiative and how to write the application.

The National Teaching Development Grant (NTDG) Scheme managed by the Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching (CAUT) in Australia is an example of such a scheme. Competitive grant programs can also operate at faculty and institutional levels as well as at a national level.

How you can best use this guide

The second file, Attachments, contains elaborations, examples, suggestions and tips. It is hyperlinked to the Guide at appropriate points. There is a link to a complete list of Attachments at the end of this document.

Printing a copy of this guide

Please comment!

On what basis are you applying?

Applying for a grant is also an opportunity to learn some key and practical ideas about teaching and learning, to pursue a scholarly approach to practice, and to acquire some basic project planning and management skills.

With success, you, the applicants, take on a major new and exciting teaching initiative with the prospect of positive feedback from your students; your learning about student learning through to project management will proceed apace; and, of course, you will likely win wider recognition. Moreover, a successful project is a solid foundation for being successful again!

Generally, applicant teams will be thinking about applying based on an idea for a teaching development which they believe will improve their students' learning. Is this the same for you? To what extent have you analysed the learning issue? Have you investigated alternative ways of helping the students to learn? How can you be sure that your idea will improve your students' learning? How are you placed to argue its potential to lead to quality learning outcomes?

These questions can be answered in part by what you have done to date and what you bring to the application process in terms of your understanding of learning and teaching, attitude, energy and commitment. You may like to review critically the cases of five tertiary teachers who typically consider applying for a grant. It will help you to assess your strengths and weaknesses as well as see what is to be involved from now to submission date: How do you come to the task of applying? Case study and questions.

Applying for a grant - the key principles and themes

A conscious, reflective process working to carefully chosen priorities

The initial team members should consciously set their first key questions, then through efficient and effective investigation, address those questions; for example, by contacting previously successful and unsuccessful applicants, reviewing examples of successful submissions and conversing with one or two fund committee members. Discussions amongst the team members will subsequently lead to decisions on these matters and setting new key questions or issues to be followed up and tasks to be undertaken.

And so the process continues - consciously, reflectively and in a disciplined manner - keeping to rolling sets of questions and issues. Investigation, as well as reflection and negotiation, will be called for. The quality of the submission and its chance of success will in large part depend on the discernment, discipline and thoroughness with which this process is engaged.

The investigations pursued by the applicants may force a review of an earlier decision at various stages. Yet 'backtracking' is always to be positively encouraged if it leads to a stronger project and application. It is never too late to make a strong application stronger!

Keeping a strategic focus on the proposed teaching and learning initiative

Throughout most of the period before submission, applicants should devote their attention to the task of researching and designing the teaching initiative, rather than writing the application. With self-discipline the application form, once read and understood, should be put to one side while the major decisions on the project itself are made: namely, the purpose in terms of student learning, and the nature and scope of the new teaching approach. Later, writing the application becomes both easier and far more effective because the applicant team has a shared, coherent `picture' of the teaching development and its rationale.

Four overlapping phases: a suggested framework

1. The first is simply coming to a decision to apply.
2. The second, and most important, is to decide the learning issue to be addressed by the teaching development and the student learning objectives. This phase also establishes the nature and scope of the new student learning experience.
3. The third phase is to develop the detail of the learning and teaching initiative as well as the plan (and budget) for developing it.
4. The final phase, building on and overlapping with the previous two, is the preparation of the written submission, including the framing of justification and argument.

Throughout all phases the applicant team is engaged in continual discussion, decision making and negotiation. A significant part of this interaction is aimed at involving and finalising a committed project team, and securing institutional support at all appropriate levels, including the course team.

The applicant team designs a process within this four phase framework. It includes tasks, with outcomes and deadlines to guide and discipline the preparation work.A suggested program for preparing an application is attached for applicants' consideration. It suggests two general tasks to help applicants work within the phases framework. The applicants would, of course, set goals which were specific to their project and the issues they decide to address.

Getting to know the funding scheme

It is essential that the applicant team gets to know the espoused and the hidden priorities of the funding scheme (obviously fund committees should be actively working to align the latter with the former!). However, the applicants may simply be seeking the committee's interpretation of a selection criterion.

Getting to know your grant scheme contains some suggestions and tips for assisting with this task.

Often institutions or functional units within an institution are required to indicate their support for applications prior to submission. Competing projects may need to be ranked at this level. The funding committee regards these endorsements and rankings as indications of local commitment to development and implementation of the project. This is the case with the National Teaching Development Grant scheme.

Clearly in such circumstances the applicants face in reality two selection processes, not one. It behoves the applicant teams to be clear about the priorities (formal and informal) which apply in both situations. It is possible, for example, that a Faculty may choose to rank projects partly according to its own strategic directions before endorsing a submission to a university scheme.

Building on experience elsewhere

The applicant team needs to recognise that tertiary teachers, in Australia and overseas, are very likely to have addressed the learning issue before - though perhaps in diverse ways. The issue may have been perceived differently and may have led to the adoption of divergent teaching strategies and methods. Some of these teachers, and other researchers, may have conducted systematic study of the issue which points to appropriate ways of enhancing learning.

Applicants need to draw on this experience and expertise for an analysis of the learning issue and the design of a teaching development. The outcome in the form of a newly introduced way of learning for students, would reflect 'best practice'. This is all the more important for the team, as the funding committee's obligation is to draw on an awareness of international best practice when considering applications.

Seeking and drawing on the experience of other tertiary teachers: tips

Enhancing learning: analysing a learning issue

The first is a complex appreciation of the learning difficulty (or the learning opportunity, see below). Presumably something in the experience of the applicants led them to decide there was a need and opportunity to improve student learning. A change needs to be made to the teaching approach and the way students go about their learning. Rather than taking the learning difficulty as initially conceived by the team, analysis (drawing on student evaluation and performance in the courses, reference to others' experiences, and reviews of relevant research on learning this topic) would lead to a much more informed and authoritative starting point.

Secondly, reflecting on this analysis contributes to greater clarity of the desired student learning outcomes. This is simply what the teaching team wants the students to learn relative to their current abilities. It is usually expressed in terms of desired student attributes, capabilities or competencies. The teaching initiative is intended to facilitate this learning.

The third and clearly interrelated theme is the type of experience to facilitate student learning (or principles to facilitate learning). We illustrate this idea by example: students of engineering may be having difficulty learning the Newtonian conception of force. Clearly the notions of Newtonian force encapsulated in his three Laws will form the basis of the student learning outcomes. A review of the education literature will quickly reveal relevant research on student learning of force in physics, with references to the common student misconceptions (including the Aristotelian view).

This same research, and some documented teaching experiments, will suggest the type of engagement to facilitate student learning. For example, students could be placed in situations which expose the implications of their naïve conceptions compared to Newton's. The students will discover for themselves that Newton's ideas have better descriptive and explanatory power.

Clearly, vital clues to the preferred learning experience have been learned. So, for example, experiments can be created on a computer simulated Newtonian world, which enable students to control objects and make predictions of their behaviour. Through the rapid and precise feedback of `actual' behaviour, students will quickly realise the inadequacy of their preconceptions. This is fertile ground for sowing Newton's ideas!

Another Example of an analysis of a student learning issue serves to illustrate the points being made here.

Clear and incisive thinking on these three aspects of a learning issue becomes both the starting point for developing a new teaching approach, and a point of reference against which the student learning experiences can be tested. The whole teaching development proposal is crafted by continually referring back to these key ideas. Needless to say, the applicant teams' initial ideas for a teaching development are developed in substance and authority - possibly even completely changed - by engaging in this process.

Overall, emphasis is being placed on what the students' learning needs are, rather than the way the teacher would like to teach (too often the starting point for tertiary teachers - refer to How do you come to the task of appyling? in the Attachments).

The analysis of the learning issue will provide the central justification for the applicants' teaching initiative and will be summarised in the final submission.

The analysis of the learning issue in these terms should obviously be commenced as early as possible as part of phase two. It should be documented with a summary circulated for comment and review as in the Suggested program for preparing an application(Attachment) . Much of this summary could then be directly incorporated in the final submission.

Analysing the learning issue: tips

Much has been made here of student learning difficulty as a key reference point for developing a teaching initiative. New learning opportunities afforded by a different approach to teaching (related, for example, to new technologies) can also serve as a reference point. However, the `affording' nature of a technology needs to be subject to a comparable analysis and critical review drawing on national and overseas sources. Conclusions would be stated in similar terms to those discussed above, including desired student learning outcomes and principles for learning. In most cases, too, analysis of a learning difficulty remains a prerequisite. Focus on the technology itself, rather than student learning, has to be avoided!

Preparing the submission

Consider the circumstances of the funding committee when it reads and considers applications :

• The committee is committed to the scheme and keen, through the scheme, to have a real impact on the practice of tertiary teaching. It certainly wants to act in a fair manner which does justice to the considerable work of the applicant teams. The committee sees many worthwhile projects but, with limited available funds, faces some very tough decisions. It knows that some good projects have to be rejected.
• Before coming to this decision, committee members are faced with reading and assessing every sentence in all the numerous submissions. Because of their busy professional lives, member's may have to read most applications in their own time - at night or weekends. They meet for a very limited time to discuss the cases and make a collective decision. They feel the pressure to act fairly and to be able to justify their decisions. Under pressure, their bottom line is their set of selection criteria and their published guidelines more generally. Usually the committee knows nothing more about the projects than is detailed in the submissions. They believe their guidelines are clear; all applicant teams must be working to the same rules.
• It is quite likely that none of the committee members are from the discipline of a project. They sometimes address this issue by subjecting applications to expert or peer review prior to their meeting. The members are a diverse group with several likely to have considerable research-based knowledge of teaching and learning. Needless to say members may hold conflicting views of teaching and learning, though a level of consensus is likely.
• To help speed decisions some form of scoring system may have been implemented. This is likely to involve committee members, upon reading an application, allocating an initial score to each selection criterion. These scores become the starting point for discussion when the committee meets.
• Above all, however, the committee is aware it has the responsibility to make the decisions and each member insists on exercising that responsibility.

The application should be written with a clear view of the learning issue and the nature of the project in mind. Why? Because every part of the submission is much more likely to reflect a coherent and convincing picture of the teaching development. There is less danger of ambiguity, internal inconsistency and vagueness which invariably conveys the impression that the team doesn't quite know what it is proposing. This was why we proposed phases two and three in the Suggested program for preparing an application (Attachment).

The committee members must be left in no doubt about :

• the learning issue the project is addressing;
• the desired and planned learning outcomes for students;
• the essential features of the proposed student learning experiences;
• the tangible learning outcomes.

Prospective applicants regularly complain about the stringent space limitations. The challenge for the applicant team is to make every word count. Every part of an application must 'speak'. This calls for very tight description and argument. There is limited space so the applicants must use all parts of the application, and indeed every sentence, to demonstrate that the team knows what it is doing and that the proposals have educational integrity. Quality has less to do with number of words and much more with the integrity of the messages conveyed by the text.

It is critical that the application, its descriptions and arguments, can be readily and completely comprehended by the intelligent layperson. The essential content related issues, such as the basic learning difficulty, the relevant learning theory and the experience elsewhere, need to be explained in a simple, concise language and expression.

Unfortunately but understandably, the writers of the application may not see that the application is not clear, complete or coherent. Unknowingly they are using their intimate knowledge of the project to interpret, or fill in gaps, while they are reading. The committee, on the other hand, generally has nothing more to go on than what appears in the submission.

Several suggestions and tips are noted in Writing an application and further tips appear under specific headings below.

Some specific issues on matters of detail

• Project title
• Project summary
• Project team
• Project description
• Project outcomes
• Project justification (including selection criteria)
• Project development process (including evaluation)
• Budget and budget justification
• Project reference group
• Project team previous experience and professional background
• Dissemination and impact beyond the project context
• Referees, endorsements and certifications
• Eligibility
• Technology-based teaching projects

After applying, where to from here?

If your application is successful

And what if your application is not successful?

First, it is in your interests to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of your ideas and the application itself - you have learned a lot, why not maintain the learning a little longer? You could, for example, pass your application on to people who are pre-eminent in tertiary teaching and learning in your discipline for their constructive suggestions.

Seek out and apply to other schemes to gain funding for your project. You may find you can use large parts of your submission without much alteration. Promote your project idea with your head of department or faculty dean in the hope that local funding can be found. In some cases external sources may be found, but this will require imaginative thinking, creative promotion and negotiation - ask around for ideas and support.

Start some part of the project as a pilot - the experiences you gain would be invaluable for another application next time round, especially if you incorporate well structured and comprehensive evaluation.

Finally recognise that you have learned not just about teaching and learning: you have new skills of researching a teaching initiative, planning project development (including budgeting a teaching initiative) and writing a scholarly application. To help see how much you have changed compare yourself with the five tertiary teachers introduced at the beginning of this guide: How do you come to the task of applying? Case studies and questions (Attachment).

References

Acknowledgements

Wendy Pryor and Monika Engelhard have been very supportive throughout the compilation of this Guide and provided valuable suggestions to help a novice prepare a document for publishing in a new medium.

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