Centre for Bioscience

The Higher Education Academy
Application for e-Learning funding 

The Centre for Bioscience funds small-scale projects to promote and support learning and teaching issues. We are pleased to announce the availability of grants of up to £4000 in the area of e-Learning.

For the purposes of this funding round e-Learning is defined as 

'learning facilitated and supported through the use of information and communication technologies'

Applications are welcomed for both pedagogic investigations and the production of learning and teaching resources. There are no restrictions on the areas that the fund will cover, however applications in the areas of 
•	Plagiarism
•	VLE-specific solutions
•	Questionbanks
•	Statistics and numeracy
will be given low priority as they are already covered by other funding streams

Projects must be grounded in the biosciences and based on sound educational principles Projects must present a case for why the use of technology might be expected to lead to an improvement in student learning. If the application is to develop or produce a resource then this must include a proposal to evaluate the impact on student learning of that resource. 

Dissemination of good teaching practice is at the core of the Centre’s functions and so we expect projects to have wide applicability. Due to their greater dissemination potential a group of small, ‘stand alone’ resources will generally be preferred over a single large resource.

Each grant is deliberately capped at £4000 to maximise the areas that we can fund and restrict each project to manageable proportions Time is frequently quoted as a constraint to implementing changes and evaluating their impact on learning, so project money may be used to buy out staff time or to employ a student. We will not, however, fund hardware or software purchases.

Proposed studies need not be restricted to consideration of a single module/course; we encourage applications where a project might work across a degree programme or multiple departments.

If you have any questions regarding a proposal we encourage you to discuss your ideas with the Centre for Bioscience.  

Applications must be made on this form. The information provided on this form and subsequently confirmed with the Centre for Bioscience will form part of the Letter of Agreement if you are awarded a grant from the e-Learning fund. 

You should submit one paper copy (signed) and a copy on disc no later than 
Wednesday 22 June 2005:

Trish Walker, Centre Manager,
Centre for Bioscience, 
The Higher Education Academy 
Room 8.49n Worsley Building, 
University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT.

Tel: 0113 343 3001, Fax: 0113 343 5894, email: heabioscience@leeds.ac.uk

1. Project title

	

2. Project leader
Title		
First name		Last name		
Department		
Institution		
Address		

		
		
Telephone		Fax		
Email		

3. Name(s) of project partners and critical friends
The primary focus of the Centre for Bioscience e-Learning Fund is to promote and develop good practice in bioscience learning and teaching. Dissemination of good practice is core to the Centre’s work and consequently. funding will not be awarded if the project outcomes and benefits are limited to a single institution. If you do not have project partners in two or more higher education institutions you are required to involve 'critical friends' from at least two other higher education institutions to maximise the transferability of project outcomes and benefits. 

Name	Dept. and Institution	Project partner or critical friend?	

			

			

4. Project Abstract
Please provide a brief abstract about the project for publicity use by the Centre for Bioscience
The text boxes will expand as you type. 

	

5. Project description
Please describe the project, addressing each of the following criteria in turn. 
The text boxes will expand as you type.

a)	With reference to the literature and other work establish  a case demonstrating a need for this e-Learning development within the bioscience community  
Please limit your answer to 500 words.

	

b) How will your development meet this need?

	

c) All projects must be relevant and of interest to departments in other institutions. How will you work with project partners/critical friends to ensure this.

If you are producing a resource (course material, CD-ROM, web-based material) please give details of how individual components (images, diagrams, student handouts etc) will be made available for independent redistribution via the Centre for Bioscience

	

d)  Please detail how you will evaluate your development project

	

e) Tangible outcomes
Production of an abstract, regular short reports and a publication are requirements of funding:
	Brief outline	
Abstract	A brief abstract about the project for publicity use by the Centre for Bioscience. Submitted as part of application form.	
Quarterly and Final Reports	Simple proforma-based quarterly reports and a final project report. The first quarterly report is due 3 months after the agreed starting date. Templates for these reports will be provided and the final report will be published by the Centre.  	
Publication	The Centre will agree with you the type of article to be produced.  For projects developing:
•	a resource – the production of a Bulletin or e-Learning Briefing article
•	pedagogy – the production of a BEE-j paper	

It is likely that your proposed project will also involve the production of additional documents or activities that would be of interest to other bioscientists.  Please specify any such items below.
	Brief outline	
Briefing paper/s		
Case study/ies		
Guide/s		
Teaching resources		
Course materials		
Conference paper		
Journal paper		
Web-based material		
Workshop session
		
Other (please outline) 		

f) Project Plan (incl. proposed start and end dates and milestones) 
Projects must be complete by 30/06/2006.
Please remember to include the tangible outcomes including reporting dates in the timetable.
Key Activity	Activity period (dates)	Activity completion (date)	
Project start			

			

			

Project completion 30/06/06			

6. Budget

We anticipate strong competition for this limited funding.  Therefore to maximise return we will be looking closely at value for money in the proposed budget. 

The payment schedule will be as follows:
•	£1000 at the start of the project
•	£1000 on submission of a satisfactory progress report
•	Balance on satisfactory completion of project

The budget headings below are indicative. It is not necessary to enter a figure for each heading. Include VAT where appropriate; departmental or institutional overheads will not be paid. Costs will depend upon the nature of the project.
Time release*
	£	
Administrative/secretarial support*
* please indicate how this has been costed (number of hours, rate of pay). 
	£	
Other assistance (please specify)*
* please indicate how this has been costed (number of hours, rate of pay). 
	£	
Training and professional development	£	
Travel and subsistence	£	
Consumables*
*any consumables must be individually detailed and costed	£	
Other costs (specify)	£	
TOTAL	£	

7. Supplementary notes:
a) The grant is cash limited.  The grant will be subject to the submission of satisfactory 3 month progress reports and will be administered through the local institution’s financial arrangements.
b) If your project proposal includes web-based material you must provide access to your website via an authorised account allowing us to download a copy as back-up..
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Projects will be deemed ineligible if any of the following is incomplete
8. Accessibility statement
All teaching materials, web sites etc must comply with appropriate accessibility guidelines (such as the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) in order to ensure fulfillment of your obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act Part 4 (SENDA). (For further information contact TechDis at http://www.techdis.ac.uk)

I agree to ensure that any original material generated will comply with appropriate accessibility guidelines to fulfil my obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act Part 4 (SENDA).	
Signature of project leader:

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9. Copyright statement
Copyright of the development resides with me/us, the original copyright holder (e.g. the author or his/her institution(s)).  However I agree that the development generated is available to the Centre for Bioscience so that it may be freely distributed to UK HE and FE institutions.	
Signature of project leader:
	
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10. Head of Unit authorisation
I confirm that the proposer has my support in applying for Centre for Bioscience e-Learning funding.	
Name: 

Position:
	
Signature: