About the Awards
The Center for the Skills & Experience Flags is pleased to announce a call for proposals for Skills and Experience Flags Course Development Awards. These awards, ranging from $1,000 to $4,000 each, will support instructors across campus as they add Flags to new or existing courses, or improve Flag-related features of courses already carrying one or more of the six curricular Flags.
Applicants are encouraged to think about ways to build Flag-specific skills or content into their courses, or to strengthen this content in their currently Flagged courses. Award recipients will work with the relevant Center for the Skills & Experience Flags curriculum specialist(s) to integrate Flag elements with their course content. Example projects include:
- Re-working assignments to address Flag content in more nuanced or thorough ways;
- Collaborating with other instructors to devise shared evaluative goals for written work performed across sections or classes;
- Develop or purchase multimedia resources that connect students with Flag content;
- Procure resources that will bring new perspectives to the Flag elements of the course.
Past winners of our course development awards have used their funds to host guest speakers, hire graders, procure software or equipment, conduct interviews or focus groups. Here’s what some of past winners have had to say:
Sally Ragsdale – SDS 328M (E, II, and QR Flags)
Transitioning a large, multi-section service course like SDS 328M Biostatistics fully online presented many challenges. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to keep students engaged with the ethical content in the class and maintain the consistency of graded assignments across dozens of teaching assistants in a completely remote environment. But with the Online Course Conversion Award, I was able to hire experienced and creative undergraduate teaching assistants to create engaging ethics assignments, build detailed grading rubrics for all assignments in Gradescope, and develop detailed training modules in Canvas for both graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants.
Stacy Sparks – CH 301 (QR Flag)
The Course Development Award from the Center for the Skills & Experience Flags enabled our teaching team to restructure our General Chemistry I course sections in such a way as to continue our emphasis on problem-solving and analytical reasoning skills in our new online format. This involved the generation of numerous new practice sets to be used by the students, plus the organization and supervision of new Zoom discussion sessions, meant to provide problem-solving practice plus a support network and chemistry community for our approximately 2000 students, mostly freshmen. The funds were largely used for teaching assistant stipends for the support work they did proof-reading the new practice problems and worksheets we developed, entering problems into our new online system, and their hand-grading of discussion group assignments.
For more information about what is involved in this process, or any unique challenges associated with adapting Flag content, please see the Flag Instructor Resources or contact us directly.
Requirements
The proposed course must
- Have a Flag proposal submitted (or approved proposal on file) by June 18, 2021. Note that for courses that do not already have an approved Flag, the Flag proposal will be evaluated along with your responses in the online application form.
- Be offered for the first time in its flagged or revised form no later than Fall 2022.
Preference will be given to courses that are, or will be, a regular part of the department’s course offerings. Award recipients agree to allow the Center for the Skills & Experience Flags share their revised course materials as models for other Flag instructors.
Submission Guidelines
All interested instructors should complete the online course development award application by 6:00 p.m. Friday, June 18, 2021. Awardees will be notified beginning on Monday, July 5.
Complete the online application form.
Award Structure
For each award, course development funds will be transferred to the instructor’s department for the instructor’s use, to support costs associated with course development (i.e. salary supplement, books, training or research expenses, technology costs, etc.). Note that instructors should check with their department’s accountant to ensure that funds may be used for the desired purpose, as different units have different policies. If funds are used for a salary supplement, fringe and taxes will be deducted from the award.
Please circulate this information to faculty in your college, school, or department and contact us via email with any questions.