Funding, Grants & Awards

Stanford Launches New Innovative Teaching and Course Design Grant Program

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 01/27/16

Stanford has launched a new Winter 2016 Grant Program, which aims to provide financial support for innovative uses of technology and course designs and redesigns.

"The goal of the new grant program is to support future-facing, faculty-driven innovation," said John Mitchell, vice provost for teaching and learning, in a prepared statement.

The new program, offered via the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning (VPTL), is a combination and expansion of the university's previous Faculty College and Digital Learning Seed Grant programs.

"By combining the existing programs, we've opened up new possibilities," added Mitchell. "First, the range of projects that qualify is much broader. Second, we've reduced the number of criteria that has to be met by any one proposal, and in this way, we've reduced the constraints on fresh ideas and new models. Third, we're providing a wider range of services to the new, grant-supported projects from the full breadth of the VPTL organization."

"Projects funded through the program may include a wide variety of innovations in teaching and learning," according to a news release, "such as realigning an undergraduate curriculum sequence, designing online modules for a flipped class, integrating active and immersive classroom activities, establishing new interdisciplinary courses and groups of courses, creating an online course for public or professional education audiences and developing a new instructional technology."

Proposals must be submitted via VPTL's online portal by February 15 and must be led by a fulltime Academic Council faculty member and require the backing of the relevant department and school.

As part of the new program, applicants can indicate if they prefer a model based on the Faculty College awards, one based on the Digital Learning Seed Grants or some combination of the two. The faculty college approach uses several teams throughout the year to share experience, learn about resources and methods and collaborate. The seed grants model allows "teams to establish a customized development schedule in accordance with evolving needs," according to a news release.

More information is available at vptl.submittable.com.