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Update on Learning and Teaching Innovation Grants for FE

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Over the past month, RSC Wales has been busy promoting JISC Funding Call 10/10 “Learning and Teaching Innovation Grants: SWaNI FE”. SWaNI is short for “Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland”, and this particular call is a very unusual opportunity to access funding for learning and teaching innovation in Further Education across the Celtic nations.

RSC Wales routinely provides advice and guidance for institutions wishing to take part in JISC funded programmes. For example we:

- welcome helpdesk enquiries to support@rsc-wales.ac.uk  or tel. 01792 295959. When time is tight, using the helpdesk ensures the fastest possible response from the most appropriate team member.

- provide an online RSC Wales Quick Guide to Funding

- tweet as @rscwales on Twitter to disseminate information rapidly about new funding opportunities

JISC also provides a wealth of help to prospective bidders, and its programme staff are very approachable. They want funded projects to succeed and they have an interest in ensuring your bids are as good as possible! As part of their support, JISC ran a short online briefing about the SWaNI FE call on 21 October. There, JISC programme manager Rob Englebright, along with JISC colleagues Liz Lathwood and Heather Williamson, provided invaluable guidance to help improve the quality of bids. We were reminded that pretty much all the information you need to submit a bid is in the call documentation, but for new bidders (and even not-so-new ones!) it was useful to get a feel for the most common pitfalls, as well as clarification on one or two of the more awkward aspects, such as costing.

Here are some of the key messages and discussion points raised:

- this call is very unusual in being ring fenced for FE in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: it’s a great opportunity!

- Learning and Teaching Innovation Grant calls are unusual in having a two-stage bidding process, so you can ‘test the water’ with a proposal without going to the extent of writing a full bid straight off

-there have been five earlier rounds of these grants, and it would be useful to look at some of the successful projects at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/ltig/fundedprojects.aspx

- the deadlines are *not* negotiable. You’ll get a confirmation email that your bid has been received and it is up to you to check if you don’t receive it. So don’t leave your submission till the very last minute.

- bids have to be innovative and there was some discussion about what counts as ‘innovation’ . Does an idea count if it is innovative in FE sector terms, but not an innovative technology per se? Whilst JISC is not going to fund work that has already been done elsewhere, you could make a case for a project which transferred something from another sector to FE and added value in the process.

- it was good to hear that JISC services are keen to assist colleges with projects. JISC Techdis for example have told us that they are very keen to hear from colleges wanting to try something innovative around accessibility and inclusion. You can contact them via helpdesk@techdis.ac.uk.

- Rob stressed that there should be a pedagogic justification for a project: technological innovation needs to be driven by institutional need and also be capable of making an impact on the sector as a whole.

- for those who use Twitter, there’s a hashtag for the programme namely #swani .

Those are just a few points from the briefing: colleges that were unable to attend can view a recording of the webinar (including slides, audio and text chat) via the “Recordings of the session” link on the JISC web page for the SWaNI FE Programme:  . FAQs from the briefing are also available here (scroll down to Documents and Multimedia). In the meantime we’ve uploaded the  presentation slides to this blog so you can get at the essentials quickly.

If you’ve already started work on your proposal, you’ll know the deadline is 12 noon on 9 November. If you haven’t made a start, it’s not too late to get a proposal together using the light-weight Learning and teaching Innovation Grants template. Again, all the documents you need are at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2010/09/grant1010.aspx . Only one proposal is allowed per institution for this particular call, so the ILT manager or appropriate senior manager should be coordinating proposals to avoid duplication. If you would like help getting started, or just want to talk over a project idea, RSC Wales would like to hear from you. Just make sure you don’t throw away a good idea by leaving it all till the last minute!

Image of stopwatch courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/

Image of stopwatch courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/


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