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Investigating Student Learning Grant

Deadline for Submission:
4 p.m. on Tuesday, January 26, 2010

ISL Application Cover Sheet in MS Word Format

Link to 2008 ISL Winners
Link to 2009 ISL Winners

INTRODUCTION

For the 2010-2011 academic year, CRLT will award monies from the Investigating Student Learning (ISL) Grant to faculty who wish to investigate aspects of student learning in their courses or programs. 

Grant awards of $3,000 are available to individual faculty members. Grant awards of $4,000 are available to faculty member-graduate student/postdoc teams. 

Investigation of student learning is becoming more common on campuses as part of a body of work known as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).  Successful SoTL projects have three attributes: 1) they are inquiry based – posing questions about problems or issues in teaching and learning, exploring practices that promote, deepen, or otherwise improve learning; 2) they use methods appropriate to the discipline to find answers to questions posed; and 3) they are designed to be made public so that results can inform the work of colleagues and the discipline more broadly. Investigating Student Learning Grant projects will be expected to have these three attributes.

All Investigating Student Learning Grants are peer-reviewed by UM Faculty.

CRLT staff will be available to consult with ISL Grant applicants as they develop their proposals, and with grantees as they carry out their projects and prepare results for dissemination. Expectations of grant winners include:

  • Attendance at a one-day Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Symposium at U-M to be held on May 4, 2010;
  • A follow-up consultation mid-project (December 2010 or January 2011) with a CRLT consultant; and
  • A poster presentation at a Spring 2011 CRLT event.
    Examples of previous grant winners' posters

The ISL Grant’s main objectives are to understand if/how pedagogical strategies are working (e.g., strategies that may have been developed by another grant), or to provide a research foundation to develop new innovations. The following list of research categories and questions provide examples of past ISL projects:

Projects may examine the effectiveness of particular pedagogical strategies:

  • Andrew Flint, Professor of Pathology, Medical School, developed a website, "Pathology and the Patient," with a 2004 Teaching with Technology Institute Grant. With his 2008 ISL Grant, Dr. Flint examines if and how this website develops second-year medical students’ analytical skills and confidence in presenting cases.
  • “Novice Teacher Learning through Content-Rich Rehearsals” involved a large project team: Magdalene Lampert, Collegiate Professor in Educational Studies; and Amy Bacevich and Melissa Stull, graduate students in Educational Studies, and Hala Ghousseini, a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Education. This School of Education team's project investigates how students at the beginning of the master's level teacher education program learn from instructional rehearsals. Results inform the School of Education curricular redesign.

Projects may seek to document how students learn key concepts, to inform future innovations:

  • Margaret Evans, a Lecturer and Research Scientist in Psychology, and Ashley Hazel, a graduate student in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, focus on how students acquire evolutionary concepts. They use their findings to design pedagogical strategies to enhance students’ understanding of evolution.
  • How do students learn to critically make cross-cultural/cross-temporal comparisons in history? Rachel Neis, Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History, investigates this question in her “Law in the Pre-modern World” course in order to inform course design.
  • Jason Daida, a Lecturer and Research Scientist in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, College of Engineering, researches how students develop computational problem-solving skills in Engineering 101. His project seeks to analyze overall learning patterns, as well as how subgroups (e.g., women and underrepresented minorities) may develop these skills. He plans to use this information to inform course content and structures for Engineering 101.

ELIGIBILITY

The competition is open, on the Ann Arbor campus of the University, to all tenured and tenure-track faculty; clinical instructional faculty; and Lecturers who have continuing appointments and course development responsibilities (i.e., an assignment from the dean, chair, or designee to develop a new course or significantly revise an existing course). Grants may be made to individual faculty members, or to teams of faculty members and up to two graduate students/postdocs who wish to undertake a joint project. All faculty members listed on the Application Cover Sheet must meet eligibility requirements.

To ensure that a variety of applicants have the opportunity to implement innovative teaching and learning activities, recipients of ISL Grants during an academic calendar year (Sept-August) will not be eligible to receive funding for an ISL Grant during the next academic calendar year, but they are welcome to apply again in the following year.

FUNDING DECISIONS

The review of proposals will be carried out by members of the CRLT staff, with final funding decisions made by the CRLT Advisory Board, composed of UM faculty from across campus.  Applications will be evaluated on the following criteria:

  • Clear definition of the question to be investigated,
  • Use of appropriate methods,
  • Feasibility of the project,
  • Potential impact of project,
  • Plans for dissemination, and
  • Specification of graduate student/postdoc collaboration (if applicable).

Awards will be announced by March 2010. ISL grant funded projects will not need to undergo IRB review, if applicants abide by University of Michigan IRB guidelines established for CRLT classroom research projects. FOR QUESTIONS ON THESE GUIDELINES, PLEASE CONTACT MARY WRIGHT (mcwright@umich.edu).

PROPOSAL CONTENT

An applicant should prepare a brief three-to-five page proposal, along with the cover page.  The proposal must include information on the following aspects of the project:

  1.  Title of the project.

  2. Research question(s) to be investigated. State the specific question(s) you hope to investigate in your project and provide a clear explanation of the significance of the question for teaching and learning in your discipline. If prior literature about teaching in your field speaks to the importance of your investigation, please include this information in your application.
    Link to pedagogical journals in the disciplines.
    Download an annotated bibliography on select literature on the science of learning (.pdf).

  3. Methodology & CRLT Support. Please tell us about how you plan to answer your research questions (e.g., What evidence of student learning will you collect? How will you analyze these data?). We seek applicants who have experience with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), as well as those who are new to the enterprise, so preliminary ideas are welcome. If your ideas are preliminary, please also indicate how CRLT staff can help you develop your project’s research plan during the May 2010, Symposium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

    To describe how you will approach the question, you may wish to include information on the following: What types of activities will you undertake? What evidence of student learning will you collect? How will you analyze these data? We are open to methods and evidence relevant to your discipline, such as (but not limited to) quantitative analysis of student assignments (tests, papers, other assignments); qualitative analysis of informal classroom assessment methods (minute papers, journal entries, response papers); systematic personal reflection; or studies involving interviews, surveys, or focus groups. Please note that use of student ratings data alone will not be considered sufficient.

  4. Implications & Dissemination. Describe how your findings will inform future iterations of your course/curriculum, and discuss the broader implications of your results (for your department, your discipline, or university teaching and learning more broadly). Beyond participation in the CRLT poster presentation, please explain how you plan to share the results of your work with colleagues at U-M and beyond. This sharing might include plans for publication, conferences, or work within your department.

  5. Timeline. Indicate the projected timeline for the various phases of your project.

  6. If a graduate student or postdoc will be on the application please indicate the role that s/he or they will play in the project. NOTE: CRLT grant monies cannot be used for Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) salaries or the tuition portion of a Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA) appointment.

  7. Please affirm that you, and the members of your project team, will be able to meet the commitments of the ISL Grant:
    • Attendance of all grantees (faculty and graduate students/postdocs) at a one-day Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Symposium at U-M (to be held May 4, 2010);
    • A follow-up meeting mid-project (December 2010 or January 2011) with a CRLT consultant; and
    • A poster display at Spring 2011 CRLT event, such as the Honoring Teaching Innovations dinner.

DEADLINES

Proposals are due to the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, January 26, 2010.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

Applicants should e-mail their completed electronic copy of the Application Cover Sheet and full proposal to crltgrants@umich.edu by 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 26, 2010.

Please submit the following application components as documents attached to a single e-mail:

  1. application cover sheet as a Word document (.doc or .docx) named “lastname_firstname_ISLcover.doc” (e.g., Smith_Jane_ISLcover.doc). 
  2. full proposal text as a Word document (e.g., Smith_Jane_ISLproposal.doc)
  3. LECTURERS ONLY: application cover sheet with department chairperson’s signature as a .pdf document named (e.g., Smith_Jane_ISLcover.pdf)

Please Note: Applicants are responsible for tracking the submission process to be sure complete proposals and supporting materials are received by CRLT by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, January 26, 2010. 

ASSISTANCE WITH PROPOSALS
Please contact Mary Wright (mcwright@umich.edu; 734-936-1135) at CRLT for more information about the application guidelines or assistance with proposals.

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