Funding, Grants & Awards | News

Instructure Selects Higher Ed Canvas Grant Winners

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 03/05/14

Instructure has chosen the winners of its Canvas Grants program, an initiative designed to encourage technological innovation from within the higher education and K-12 communities. The five higher ed winners will each receive $10,000 to fund their winning proposals, and the 10 K-12 winners will receive $5,000 each.

"Applicants submitted more than 400 proposals," according to an Instructure news release, "which were then evaluated by an independent panel of educational leaders, analysts and journalists on the basis of originality, creativity, feasibility and potential to drive meaningful change in the quality of education."

The five higher education winners and their projects are:

• Carnegie Mellon University's Ted Curran won in the category "Facilitating Competency-Based Learning" for his proposal to create a dashboard for students to track their progress against their career and educational goals;
• Virginia Stewart Huntley of Alamo Colleges took the top spot in the Engaging Students Throughout Their Education Category for "her request to use problem-based learning and a cloud-based, open source ePortfolio solution as part of an interdisciplinary core curriculum program," according to an Instructure news release;
• Robin Bartoletti, from Texas Woman's University and North Central Texas College, topped the "Blended Online and Face-to-Face Courses" category with her plan to create a blended learning massive open online course (MOOC) focused on the maker movement;
• First place in the "New Models of Content Curriculum Development and Sharing" category went to University of Southern Indiana's Katherine Winsett for her development of "a tool that makes it possible to conduct robust data collection, analysis and collaboration to support active inquiry," according to information released by Instructure; and
• Karen Tinsley-Kim of the University of Central Florida was awarded first place in the "Applying Universal Design to Online Learning" category for her idea to create a tool that helps instructors check their course material for compliance with universal design and accessibility guidelines.

"Our goal is to fuel innovation and creative thinking within the existing educational community," said Jared Stein, vice president of research and education at Instructure, in a prepared statement. "We believe the real innovators are those within the education system who focus each day on modernizing the teaching and learning experience. This program aims to support these innovators by providing funds that can help make their ideas a reality."

More information about the grant winners is available at instructure.com.