Emerging Pedagogies Seed Grants and Faculty Fellows
**The call for proposals for 2024 is now closed. Applicants will be contacted by March 8 about whether their proposal has been accepted.**
Overview
The Office of the Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education is pleased to announce a call for proposals that will support Duke faculty engaging in applied research and knowledge building around emerging pedagogies with seed grants and professional learning communities led by Faculty Fellows up to $10,000 each. This program is in support of the Duke 2030 goals and ambitions to enhance teaching and learning at Duke.
This program is for faculty at Duke who are reimagining how, where, when, and with whom learning happens, exploring what 21st century Duke learning experiences can look like and need to be, and want to develop their knowledge or create scholarship about emerging pedagogies. We want to expand the scope of who are considered “Duke learners” to include those beyond traditional undergraduate and graduate students, and ensure all Duke-provided learning experiences in any modality are well-designed, learner-centered, and apply evidence-based innovative pedagogies.
Some priorities for emerging pedagogy exploration include, but are not limited to:
- Incorporating high-impact pedagogies such as pedagogies of care, equitable teaching practices, experiential and collaborative learning, and immersive pedagogies (AR/VR/XR).
- Reexamining the nature and purposes of effective assessment such as generative AI in teaching, competency-based learning, alternative assessment, and other innovative assessment strategies driven by learner-centered course design.
- Expanding the definition of learners and the modalities of the learning experience such as via early STEM education, alumni and professional education, learning in aging, and learning at scale.
Program goals
The program has several goals:
- Supporting and facilitating iterative applied research projects about emerging and innovative pedagogies.
- Cultivating a more connected and robust community of faculty at Duke who are thinking about and experimenting with emerging and innovative pedagogies.
- Promoting the engagement of Duke voices in national conversations about emerging pedagogies and pedagogical scholarship through peer-reviewed publication, popular media, and presentations on educational research at relevant conferences.
Program tracks
The two components of this 2024 Call for Proposals are:
Emerging Pedagogies Seed Grants
Emerging Pedagogies Seed Grant applicants may request up to $10,000 for an applied research, scholarship of teaching and learning, and/or prototype project focused on an issue relevant to emerging pedagogies. In addition to seed funding, the Office of the Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education will provide research consultation and IRB process assistance.
The proposed research question should address a specific educational problem, demonstrate knowledge of the state of the existing scholarship on the topic, and seek to develop an early-stage solution deliverable (for example, a plan for scaling the tested pedagogical intervention, an education technology prototype, or an open educational resource) that can be built upon in future work. The approaches used to explore the research question should be designed from a learner-centered perspective and should ensure equity in learning experience. Recipients will be expected to share the preliminary direction or findings of their work during the Fall 2024 Emerging Pedagogies Summit at Duke. An applicant should propose a project able to be completed in one year, but can later apply for funding to continue or expand the project, based on a progress report after the first year.
Emerging Pedagogies Faculty Fellows
Up to four Emerging Pedagogies Faculty Fellows will be awarded to Duke or Duke Health regular rank faculty through a competitive application process. Each Fellow will assemble and lead a small (3 – 8 member) professional learning community interested in deepening its understanding and practice of an issue relevant to emerging pedagogies priorities as listed above.
Fellows will gather and convene participants primarily from Duke but are encouraged to include cross-institutional and cross-sector participants as applicable. Key responsibilities for each Fellow will include:
- setting the goals for their learning community,
- convening periodic group discussions for knowledge- and community-building,
- planning and implementing activities designed to meet the community’s goals, and
- developing a track for the Fall 2024 Emerging Pedagogies Summit at Duke.
Each Fellow may request up to $10,000 for community-building activities, professional development for their group around the chosen topic, and knowledge-sharing from their group to the broader community. A Fellow can propose to serve in this role for up to three years. Funding will be awarded one year at a time with continuing funding released based on annual check-ins on project status and community progress.
Eligibility
Project lead: The Project Lead must be a regular rank Duke or Duke Health faculty member, from any discipline in any school or university institute, initiative and center (UIC). A faculty member may serve as Project Lead for one proposal.
Co‐Project Lead (Co-Lead): Seed Grant applicants may, but do not have to, include a Co-Lead on their applications. Co-Leads may be any rank faculty or staff and may be listed as Co‐Lead on a maximum of two proposals. There should be no more than one Co‐Lead on any grant proposal.
Scope and duration
Project funding will typically range from $2,000 to $10,000 annually. While we encourage applicants to think of their applied research activities and their engagement with their emerging pedagogies community as multi-year efforts, applications to this CFP should initially propose a project plan and request funds that can be completed in one year. Successful applicants will have the opportunity to request continuing funding for up to 3 years based on review in Spring 2025 of progress‐to‐date. Continuing funding is also contingent on project team participation in program activities including periodic check-ins with the Office of the Vice Provost of Learning Innovation and Digital Education, program-related events such as future Emerging Pedagogies Summits, or other related activities.
Proposal requirements and submission deadline
For Seed Grant applicants:
- A research proposal including background and motivation, relationship to current literature and your own past research (if applicable), research objectives and methods, potential impact, start date, end date.
- A participant list, including name, email address, affiliation, and project role.
- A proposed budget for the first year of your project and a budget justification for how proposed funding will be used and how it will enable success of the project. Note:
- Funding from other sources for the same or related work should be disclosed.
- Funds may not be used to support faculty effort, full-time staff effort, travel (unless required for research) or monetary distributions to support secondary or related projects.
- A project timeline that provides a projection of progress and benchmarks for the first year of the project.
- Only if you have already done some research related to your proposed project, and have an approved IRB protocol for that, a copy of the IRB protocol.
- CV for project lead and (if applicable) co-project lead.
For Fellows applicants:
- A project narrative including a description of an issue relevant to emerging pedagogies priorities, planned learning community activities and rationale, start date, end date and metrics of success.
- A participant list, including name, email address, affiliation, and project role. If you do not yet know the participants in your learning community, you should outline your plan to recruit participants. In addition to faculty, your participants can include graduate students, post-docs, and staff whose work is relevant to the emerging pedagogies explored.
- A proposed budget for the first year of your project and a budget justification for how proposed funding will be used and how it will enable success of the project. Note:
- Funding from other sources for the same or related work should be disclosed.
- Funds may not be used to support faculty effort, full-time staff effort, travel (unless required for research) or monetary distributions to support secondary or related projects.
- A project timeline that provides a projection of progress and benchmarks for the first year of the project.
- CV for project lead and (if applicable) co-project lead.
Applications
**The call for proposals for 2024 is now closed. Applicants will be contacted by March 8 about whether their proposal has been accepted.**
Applications and all requested supporting documents will be collected in the online application forms linked below. Applications were accepted until Friday, January 26, 2024, 5 pm ET (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
Selection criteria and review process
Applications will be reviewed by the Office of the Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education, with other reviewers included at the Vice Provost’s discretion.
Factors on which proposals will be evaluated:
- feasibility of project/research plan,
- focus on the identified priorities outlined above,
- focus on equity in learning and learner-centered activities,
- interdisciplinarity in project team/participants,
- knowledge of relevant existing scholarship (for seed grant applications),
- project activities start date no later than June 2024
Report and program activities participation
Recipients will complete a brief template-based report at the conclusion of the funding cycle that summarizes project activities, assesses outcomes, details budget expenses and describes efforts to sustain or build upon the successes of their project.
Recipients will also participate in the Fall 2024 Emerging Pedagogies Summit (by presenting, helping organize or both depending on need and interest), may be asked to contribute to Learning Innovation’s blog, may be asked to attend and participate in a 2025 funding cycle information session, or other programmatic activities.
Leaders of 2024 seed grant research projects will be able to apply for up to $1,000 in conference registration or travel funding to support presenting about their educational research at pedagogical or educational research conference(s) in 2025 or later.
Timeline
| CFP released | 12/5/2023 |
| Application deadline (Extended) | 1/26/24, 5 PM EST |
| Applicants notified | 3/8/2024 |
| Funds available | 4/1/2024 |
Contact and information sessions
If you have questions about this CFP:
- Attend one of two CFP virtual office hours:
- Email the Office of the Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education at learninginnovation@duke.edu.
FAQ
How is this CFP different from other research or intellectual community CFPs for faculty?
This CFP focuses on conducting applied research and building knowledge specifically about efficacies of emerging pedagogies. The goals of the grant program are to support and grow the community of those at Duke interested in producing scholarship and/or public knowledge around teaching and learning practice, and to facilitate cohort-based professional development for those seeking to deepen their knowledge of and experimentation with emerging pedagogies.
Can I apply for both the Seed Grant and the Faculty Fellows this year?
Yes, but you can only be granted one in a given grant cycle.
I’m a faculty member at DKU. Can I apply?
We welcome DKU faculty to participate in our communities of practice and educational research studies, but for this CFP the project leads should be Duke or Duke Health faculty. DKU faculty can be seed grant co-leads or members of communities of practice proposed in this CFP. DKU faculty interested in leading faculty learning communities or educational research projects should contact DKU’s Center for Teaching and Learning, which offers CFPs in these areas for the DKU community.
I’m a clinical faculty member in the School of Medicine or School of Nursing. Can I apply?
Yes.
What is the difference between “research” and “applied research”?
Applied research focuses on a particular problem at hand rather than theoretical questions to be answered. In this case, a particular instructional/pedagogical problem.
Can I ask faculty from other universities to be a part of an Emerging Pedagogies Community?
Yes, although initially we would like these individuals to be from the Triangle area.
My idea for an Emerging Pedagogies Seed Grant does not involve technology. Is that ok?
Yes!