Mighty oaks from little acorns grow

The Learning and Teaching Project Award (LTPA) Scheme is a great opportunity for all staff involved in teaching and supporting student learning to get financial support in carrying out a pedagogic research project.

Your project should focus on one of the following: developing academic practice, assessment and feedback, student engagement, or quality enhancement.

Anglia Learning & Teaching has a long history in supporting pedagogic research projects and we’re never happier than working with colleagues on these as we’re committed to supporting and enhancing teaching excellence and continuing to build our Pedagogic Research Community.

For the Learning and Teaching Project Award scheme, we welcome applications from either individuals or teams, both full- and part-time staff, and from partner institutions too. The proposal form is no more than four sides of A4. While we want to give priority to new projects, we do have limited funds. You can also apply if you want to build on a previously funded LTPA-funded initiative.

If your application is successful, you will get funding of up to £3,500 from AL&T to support you with the project. Of course, there are some conditions such as getting ethical approval, saying how you are going to spend the money, and having the relevant people in your faculty or service sign the project off to indicate their support. Once a proposal has been submitted it goes through a two-stage peer review process. You’ll be told the outcome at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference in Cambridge on 25 June 2019.

Last year we had applications from a broad range of colleagues across our university and we would be delighted to get a similar range this year. Have a look at these and other projects on our Canvas page, which is an archive of all successful projects since 2010. This will give you an idea how to write your own proposal and the sorts of proposal we’re looking for, as well as helping you avoid applying for something that has been funded in the past.

The initial funding can also lead to bigger, external funding opportunities. For example, Sian Shaw started off with one of our LTPAs and has subsequently been awarded over half-a-million pounds in external funding.

We ask successful award holders to provide us with a mid-point progress report, and to share their findings at our annual Learning and Teaching. You’ll need to provide a case study of your findings for inclusion in the Good Teaching Exchange. We also host links to project outputs on our Pedagogic Research Directory.

At the end of your projects we also encourage you to publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal. We’ve got a team of people in AL&T who will have a chat with you about taking your project forward for publication and will help you at each step along the way. Contact Simon Pratt-Adams if you’d like to know more about the support we can offer.

If you’ve got an idea for a project and want to talk it through, you can contact Mark Warnes. He has seven years of experience of working on these projects, so will be able to point you in the right direction.

You need to get your proposal to your Deputy Dean by 5pm on Friday 22 March 2019 and then to AL&T by 5pm on Friday 29 March 2019.

By Mark Warnes and Simon Pratt-Adams
Anglia Learning & Teaching