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Investigating Student Learning Grant

 Submit Grant Applications   Submit Grant Reports

Deadline for Submission:
4 p.m. on Tuesday, January 24, 2012

ISL Application Cover Sheet in MS Word Format

Link to 2011 ISL Winners
Link to 2010 ISL Winners
Link to 2009 ISL Winners
Link to 2008 ISL Winners

INTRODUCTION

For the 2012-2013 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. This year, funding will be doubled (i.e., $6,000-$8,000) for funded proposals that focus on learning experiences suggested by President Mary Sue Coleman's Third Century Initiative: (1) action-based immersive learning experiences or (2) student development of creative approaches to the world's greatest challenges. 

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 7, 2012;
  • A follow-up consultation mid-project (December 2012 or January 2013) with a CRLT consultant; and
  • A poster presentation at a Spring 2013 CRLT event and completion of a brief web form about key project outcomes by August 1, 2013.
    (For examples of previous grant winners' posters, please click here.)

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.

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 previous ISL grant recipients.  Applications will be evaluated on the following criteria:

  • Clear definition of the question to be investigated,
  • Use of appropriate methods that align with the research question(s) being asked,
  • Feasibility of the project,
  • Potential impact of project,
  • Plans for dissemination,
  • Specification for how participation in the ISL Grant and with the ISL group will further the project, and
  • Specification of graduate student/postdoc collaboration (if applicable).
  • If applicable, specification of project’s relationship to Third Century Initiative learning goals: action-based immersive learning experiences or student development of creative approaches to the world's greatest challenges.

Awards will be announced by March 2012. 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).

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

All applications are handled electronically and must be submitted by 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 24, 2012.

  1. Prepare a 3-5 page proposal in accordance with the proposal content guidelines below.
  2. Download and complete this cover sheet. Please paste your proposal into the cover sheet
    (item #11) and save the document as a .pdf file.
  3. Click the Submit Application button at the top of this page.
  4. Fill out the web form. Please note the following:
    • Funding requested: Please type "$3,000" or "$6,000" if you are
      applying as an individual faculty member or a faculty team. Please
      type "$4,000" or "$8,000" if you are applying as a faculty
      member-graduate student/postdoc team. (Grants of $6,000-$8,000 will be
      awarded for funded projects that demonstrate alignment with learning
      experiences suggested by President Mary Sue Coleman's Third Century
      Initiative: (1) action-based immersive learning experiences or (2)
      student development of creative approaches to the world's greatest
      challenges.)
    • Start and end dates: Please use May 2012 as your start date and May 2013 as your end date.
    • Principal investigators: A faculty member must be listed as the first (lead) PI.
    • An abstract of no more than 150 words is requested.
    • No budget is required for ISL applications.
  5. Upload the coversheet, in .pdf file format.
  6. Click on the Submit Application button at the top of the page.
You will receive confirmation from CRLT that your application has been received and is complete.

 

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. If you seek doubled funding, please make explicit how your proposal would focus on action-based immersive learning experiences or student development of creative approaches to the world's greatest challenges.
    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 2012, 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. CRLT support. Please tell us how you anticipate that participating in CRLT's ISL Grant will further your project. For example, what support/feedback do you hope to receive from CRLT or the ISL community of grantees?

  7. 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.

  8. 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 in May of 2012);
    • A follow-up meeting mid-project (December 2012 or January 2013) with a CRLT consultant; and
    • A poster display at Spring 2013 CRLT event, such as Enriching Scholarship.

Please note that a budget is not a required component of the proposal.

DEADLINES

Proposals must be submitted by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, January 24, 2012

 

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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