Fellowship in Teaching Innovation Award

Deadline for applications: March 1 (annually)

The purpose of the Fellowship in Teaching Innovation award is to encourage faculty members (full-time and part-time) to pursue teaching innovations at Western University. Teaching innovation projects may take many forms, such as developing new strategies for student engagement, or initiatives involving the novel incorporation of educational technology into classroom settings. The Fellowship exists primarily to support undergraduate and professional school teaching (excludes postgraduate medical education programs) at the University, matching the Towards Western at 150 commitment to promote teaching and learning for the future. 

The Fellowship in Teaching Innovation will be awarded through an annual competition adjudicated by a review committee comprised of three or four faculty members selected by the Provost (or designate).


Fellowship Value

Two Fellowships of up to $12,000* will be awarded annually

(*NOTE: amount has been increased)

Recipients may use the funds awarded to develop teaching innovation projects through the purchase of release-time, support for graduate students, or acquisition of technology.


Eligibility

The Fellowship is open to current faculty members (full-time and part-time) from any Western faculty (members of the Affiliated University Colleges are not eligible) at any stage in their teaching careers.

Fellowships may be awarded to support the development of a new innovation or in recognition of an existing innovation already in use at Western that would be enhanced by further development.


Requirements of Recipients

  • Fellowship recipients must be willing to share their advances in teaching with the rest of the University, through promotion or distribution by the Centre for Teaching and Learning, the Instructional Technology Resource Centre, or other appropriate mechanism.
  • Recipients must be willing to give a talk at the University about their innovation during the academic year in which the Fellowship is awarded.
  • Recipients must submit a final report outlining the success of the project and how the funds were used by September 1 following the academic year in which the Fellowship is awarded.

Evaluation Criteria

  • impact or proposed impact on the quality of instruction at Western
  • transferability to other courses/instructors
  • sustainability of, and differentiation created for Western by, the innovation
  • novelty of the innovation.

All applications must be accompanied by an explanation of how the four criteria have been or will be met. The application must include a timeline and benchmarks for delivery of the innovation.


Evaluation Committee

A committee of three or four faculty members selected by the Provost (or designate) will review the applications and recommend the recipients for the Fellowship to the Provost.


Timing

Applications are due by March 1. Decisions will be made by May 1, allowing the Teaching Innovation Fellowship recipient use of the funds for the following academic year.


Submission Guidelines

The completed application should be submitted electronically as a single pdf file on or before March 1, 2024 to the Centre for Teaching and Learning at ctl@uwo.ca.

Please note: the Cover Page requires the signatures of the applicant's Chair/Director and Dean.

For further information, please contact the Centre for Teaching and Learning at ctl@uwo.ca.

There are five parts to the proposal submission:

  1. Summary Description of the Project (1 page maximum)

  2. The Proposal* (5 pages maximum)

  3. Short Curriculum Vitae (4 pages maximum)

  4. Teaching Philosophy Statement (1 page maximum). The teaching philosophy statement should discuss how the applicant's teaching philosophy relates to the teaching innovation.

  5. Application Cover Sheet with endorsements by the Chair/Director and Dean.

* Proposal submissions should include:

  1. a rationale for the project in plain words for a non-specialized audience
  2. project objectives
  3. timelines
  4. the number of students affected by the project (please specify course(s) to which this innovation will apply)
  5. a plan for relevant evaluation of learning/impact of learning
  6. a detailed budget outline** that indicates if funds are available and/or requested from other sources
  7. a plan for the dissemination of the project outcome(s) within the University
  8. a plan for the sustainability of, or differentiation created for Western by, the innovation

 

**Please consult with the Instructional Technology Resource Centre group (elearning-tech@uwo.ca or Deanna Grogan at x85516) prior to including the purchase of any computer software or electronic devices in your proposed budget. In many instances, these resources can be provided centrally and need not be included in your budget calculations.

Successful Applicants

Recipients of the award must agree to participate in either the Spring or Fall Perspectives on Teaching conference sponsored by the Centre for Teaching and Learning, or another appropriate venue, within the University during the academic year in which the Fellowship is awarded. If the project proposed for the Fellowship involves research with human subjects, the researchers must complete the Ethics Review protocol

Project Evaluation Criteria

  • strengthens or enhances students' learning
  • promotes teaching method(s) that is/are new/innovative
  • includes a plan for relevant evaluation of learning/impact of learning
  • includes a conceptual framework/rationale and objectives for the project
  • develops teaching modules or innovations that have application to other courses/instructors
  • includes a budget outline with detailed explanations of costs
  • denotes a plan to sustain the project or innovation beyond the funding year
  • includes a plan for the dissemination of the project/innovation within Western University.


Past Fellowship Recipients

Recipient(s)

Department

Year

Project Title

Courtney Casserly

Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences

2023

Renorming health care teaching: using an online
teaching module to prepare learners to perform a
lumbar puncture in a clinical setting

Ashley McKeown

School of Nursing

2023

Aesthetic Reflection Assessment – Innovating
Curriculum through Collaboration

Oana Birceanu, Christine Bell, Angela Beye, Fabiana Caetano-Crowley & Anita Woods

Physiology & Pharmacology

2022

Horizontal Curriculum Integration in Physiology and Pharmacology Undergraduate Courses

Laura Cayen and Jessica Polzer

Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies

2022 Screenshot Elicitation as Critical Pedagogy: Engaging Students through Self-Tracking Apps

Geneviève De Viveiros

French Studies

2020 Improving literacy in French with interactive audiobooks

Heather Hill, Paulette Rothbauer & Marni Harrington

Information and Media Studies

2020 Indigenizing and decolonizing the curriculum of the MLIS program

Drs. Aleksandra Zecevic and Tara Mantler

School of Health Studies

2019 Impact of Innovative Engaged Learning in Higher Education on Career Development: A pilot study

Dr. Robert Cockcroft

Department of Physics and Astronomy 2019 Reconciliation through Indigenous skies: Developing and offering an undergraduate course with a two-eyed seeing approach to astronomy
Robert Corless Mathematical & Statistical Sciences 2018 Computational Discovery on Jupyter
Aaron Hodgson Music Performance Studies 2018 Global concerts, global teaching: Live streaming across the Applied Music Instruction Curriculum
Emily Knight School of Health Studies 2017 Lightboards in Our Classrooms: Student-Generated Videos Using Novel Instructional Technology

Lloy Wylie, Ava John-Baptiste, Stephanie Hayne Beatty & Lisa Boyko

Schulich Interfaculty Program in Public Health

Student Success Centre

2017 Partnering for Change: A Model of Community Engaged Public Health Education

Nicole Campbell

Bachelor of Medical Sciences Program 2016 Implementing ePortfolios for Senior Undergraduate Medical Science Students to Promote Lifelong Learning

Richard Booth & Barbara Sinclair

Nursing 2015 Medication administration and the SMART Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) technology: Generating and evaluating teaching-learning best practices in simulated clinical practice
Priya Subramanian,
Sreelatha Varapravan, Iouri Rybak & Amer Burhan
Psychiatry 2014 Enhancing Suicide Risk Assessment Skills through Simulations in a Virtual Environment
Mark McDayter & Alison Conway English
Writing, Rhetoric & Professional Communication
2013 Constructing Communities of Writing: New Technologies and Peer Instruction in the Humanities
Yolanda Babenko-Mould & Karen Ferguson Nursing 2012 Reconceptualizing 'Neighbourhood as Community': Innovation in Student Placement Settings

Bethany White, David Bellhouse, Sohail Khan, Mary Millard & Duncan Murdoch

Statistical and Actuarial Sciences

2011

"The Best of Both Worlds: Blending online and face-to-face instruction in Introductory Statistics”

Peter A. Ferguson & Bruce Fyfe

Political Science & Western Library

2010

“Critical Success”: Developing a collaborative, fully integrated information literacy infrastructure into a Political Science curriculum

Barry Schwartz, Richard Bohay & Judy McCormick

Dentistry

2009

Evaluating the introduction of a patient’s voice in dental education through reflective experiential learning and self reported changes in empathy

Joerg Dietz

Richard Ivey School of Business

2008

Creating Cross-Cultural Experiences at The University of Western Ontario: Studying with International Exchange Students and Using Virtual Technologies

Tamie Poepping, Blaine Chronik, Ian MacDonald & Eugene Wong

Physics & Astronomy, Medical Biophysics

2007

Development of Medical Physics Lab Experiments for Teaching Physics

Karen Ferguson & Barbara Sinclair

Nursing

2006

Integrated Curriculum Design

William Turkel

History

2005

Handheld Computing for Place-Based Learning

Tom Haffie

Biology

2005

PRESSWestern: Implementation of Personal Response Technology in Large Classrooms

Shelley McKellar

History

2004

Learning through Objects - Development of the UWO Medical Artifact Collection as a Teaching and Research Resource

Tom Stavraky

Physiology & Pharmacology

2003

Interactive Multimedia Modules for Higher Education in Human Physiology

Jin Jiang

Electrical & Computer Engineering

2002

An Innovative Approach using Advanced Technology to Enhancing the Effectiveness of Classroom Instruction and Laboratory Learning for Large Classes