eSTEeM Call for Scholarship Project Proposals December 2024

27th November 2024

Welcome to the 25th eSTEeM call for scholarship project proposals for OU colleagues. If you are new to the STEM Faculty and haven’t heard of eSTEeM before, but have an interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, then please talk to your School Scholarship Lead (details below). If you are based outside of a school, or are unsure who best to contact, then please email esteem@open.ac.uk in the first instance to arrange a discussion with an eSTEeM Director and we will advise you further.

As in previous calls, we are interested in supporting groups and individual scholars and we would like to receive both:

1. fully worked up proposals by groups or individuals, and
2. expressions of interest from individuals who would like to join others working on particular themes but do not yet have a defined project. We will then match people according to your expressed interest(s) and help you explore/develop a new project.

Priority areas

Below is a list of strategic priority areas that will help you in focusing your project proposal. Please visit the project page for further information about our themes and details of our current and archived projects.

Across all priority areas, we would encourage project teams to consider how to actively involve students as collaborators/co-investigators within their project teams and to draw upon the experience of colleagues in the Student Support Team. Further details can be found below under Guidance and recommendations.

• Continuation and completion: To meet the OU’s goal of enabling success for our students, we are actively seeking scholarship projects that investigate and implement strategies to enhance student continuation and completion, such as sense of community/belonging.
• Access, Participation and Success: We continue to seek projects related to Access, Participation and Success which investigate issues around registration, tuition, completion and awarding gaps with respect to Black students, students with mental health challenges and students with the highest level of deprivation.  
• Curriculum design and assessment: We are keen to encourage projects that investigate ways in which we can enhance teaching of sustainability through the STEM curriculum and/or embed sustainability in curriculum design/creation.
• Technology Enhanced Learning: With the rise of generative artificial intelligence and extended reality, we are interested in exploring the challenges, opportunities and impact of technologies on STEM teaching, learning and assessment.

What to do next

Obtain and complete the proposal form

If you have a worked-up proposal in mind, then please download a project proposal form (link below under Related Resources). To assist you in preparing your proposal, please view our current and archived eSTEeM projects and final reports. Please also visit the Scholarship Exchange, which is the University’s repository of scholarship projects and reports to explore any related scholarship that your proposal can build upon. We would also strongly encourage you to speak to those colleagues who have conducted similar projects to the one you may be proposing.

Alternatively, if you would prefer to register your interest in a particular area of scholarship, rather than proposing a full project, please send an email to esteem@open.ac.uk indicating the priority area(s) you are interested in investigating and why.

Eligibility criteria

Due to budgetary constraints, please note that funding for projects will be limited and the eSTEeM Coordination Group will be considering all projects based on the following criteria:

1. How closely the project addresses one or more of the priority areas.
2. The range, scope and clarity of the project (e.g. how many modules/schools within STEM will benefit and how clearly has this been described within the project plan and evaluation processes).
3. How it builds upon previous projects from across STEM/the university and other research.
4. The breadth and diversity of project team and others involved with the project, including the use of Student Support Team members and involvement of students as partners.
5. The potential for impact of the project as based on the criteria within the Impact Evaluation Tracking Tool (IETT).
6. The number of ongoing and/or unfinished projects by members of the project team.

The expected maximum amount of funding for each project will be £3,000 for the total duration of the project. Funding for external dissemination to UK or international conferences will be considered separately and should not be included within the budget section of the proposal form. Any requests of funding for external dissemination will only be considered once evidence of progression in the form of an interim report or a final report has been submitted and engagement with internal dissemination has occurred. Requests for funding must be made to the eSTEeM Management Team before the submission of an abstract and is dependent on the remaining budget within eSTEeM for that academic year.

Sign-off procedure for proposals

Please note that before submission to eSTEeM all project proposals must be reviewed and endorsed by your School Scholarship Lead or eSTEeM Director, if you are based outside of a school. Your time allocation must be approved by your Lead Line Manager (Associate Lecturers) and all proposals must be approved by your Head of School. Therefore, please ensure that you contact your respective School Scholarship Lead/eSTEeM Director to discuss your idea as soon as possible, and ideally no later than Friday 10th January 2025. This will allow them sufficient time to support you and provide feedback on your draft proposal before the deadline. Please also make sure that you allow enough time for your Lead Line Manager and Head of School or Line Manager, if you based outside of a school, to sign-off the proposal in advance of the deadline.  

Suggested timeline

If you are an AL, and possibly working across a number of schools, then please contact the Scholarship Lead of the school to which the proposal relates.

Pre-bidding Workshop and Drop-in Session

We will be holding a pre-bidding workshop to assist colleagues with the preparation of an eSTEeM project proposal and to discuss any project ideas that you may have. We would strongly encourage anyone who is new to submitting a proposal to attend. The workshop will take place on Tuesday 10th December, 14.30-16.00 via MS Teams. The workshop will be recorded and available as a replay shortly afterwards; the link for which will appear on this page under ‘Related resources.’

In addition, we will be holding a drop-in session on Tuesday 17th December, 19.00-20.00 via Teams, for those colleagues unable to attend the workshop who wish to discuss their project idea or if you have any further queries. To register for one, or both, sessions please visit the registration page.

Connect and discuss SoTL projects ‘speed dating’ style

This 3rd eSTEeM speed dating event, which will take place on Tuesday 17th December, 10.30-12.00, is designed to share ideas and create new scholarship groups. It will be of particular use for anyone who has a scholarship idea in mind and wants to see what others think about it and potentially work together on a proposal for this call or a future call. Please visit the registration page. 

Submission deadline

The deadline for fully worked up proposals and expressions of interest is 17.00 on Friday 28th February 2025. Proposals will be scrutinised by the eSTEeM Coordination Group in mid-March 2025 and proposers will be informed shortly afterwards.

Project call timetable 

If you are unable to develop a proposal during this round, we anticipate further calls as detailed below.

Further details

The estimated duration of projects is around 12-18 months with each team member expected to commit a minimum of 10 days. 

Key information for Associate Lecturers

1. Please note there is a maximum threshold of 1.3 FTE for all OU work. In the first instance, you should ensure that you have capacity for this role within your OU workload FTE. If you are unsure, please contact your AL Services Team to check if you have the capacity to undertake this task. You can check directly via the AL Workload Report tool. Before applying to this Expression of Interest, you will need to firstly contact your line manager to discuss your workload, to establish AL role workload commitments and whether exceptionally undertaking this task from your AL role FTE will leave you with sufficient capacity to undertake any other key, expected AL tasks. If no capacity is available, in exceptional circumstances the Faculty approval process to raise an Additional Duties Contract will be followed.
2. Project time is limited to a maximum total of 15 days (over 12–18 months) which may be shared amongst a number of ALs working on the same project.
3. Scholarship skills development and mentoring will be provided by eSTEeM.
4. Project proposals will require endorsement from your School Scholarship Lead, approval of your time from your Lead Line Manager (for each AL on the project team) and approval from your Head of School.
5. Applying for an eSTEeM project for the first time may feel a little daunting but please remember there is help and support available. If you have an idea, but not a defined project, and would like to discuss it further in the first instance, then please feel free to contact your School Scholarship Lead (details above), your Lead Line Manager or the eSTEeM Management Team (esteem@open.ac.uk).
6. eSTEeM projects often require assistance with a variety of tasks, such as the collection of quantitative and qualitative data, literature reviews or running focus groups with students. Therefore, if you do not wish to lead a project but would be interested in contributing to a project in this way, please complete an AL skills register and return it to us at esteem@open.ac.uk. We will keep your details on file and when an opportunity arises, we will try to match it to the skills, experience, and areas of interest that you have told us about. 

Guidance and recommendations

Students as Partners in Scholarship

We continue to prioritise projects that actively involve students as collaborators/co-investigators in the project team (and not just as research participants). We are happy to provide guidance on how exactly this might be achieved within the context of your project. Please note that students who accumulate eight hours or more of working on an eSTEeM project will be able to claim a digital badge ‘Student Partner in Educational Research’ in recognition of their contributions to scholarship.

Collaboration with Student Recruitment and Support Centre/Student Support Team colleagues

We would like to further encourage collaborative proposals between the Student Recruitment and Support Centre and the STEM Faculty that will evaluate the impact of activities around student experience and success. We are keen for these to involve Student Recruitment and Support Centre staff as active partners in the design and operation of the project, and not merely in contacting students. eSTEeM has a panel of SST Scholarship Champions who are advisors (Senior Advisors and Educational Advisors) willing to work with colleagues on eSTEeM projects. If you would like to know more about current and planned activities within individual subject areas, please contact your School SST Lead.

Professional development

If you are seeking to gain recognition as a Fellow or Senior Fellow of Advance HE, a completed eSTEeM project can be helpful to support your claim for professional recognition against the Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education (PSF 2023) via Applaud.

In addition, eSTEeM has developed a Badged Open Course Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in STEM, which is freely available on OpenLearn. The aim of the course is to guide colleagues through the process of systematically designing, conducting, reflecting upon and evaluating an ethically reasoned SoTL inquiry. This resource is highly recommended for anyone who is new to scholarship and looking to submit a proposal.

If you have any queries, then please do not hesitate to contact us at esteem@open.ac.uk.

We look forward to receiving your proposals and expressions of interest.

Related Resources: 

Attachment	Size
eSTEeM-Project-Proposal-Form-Dec-24-FINAL.docx	79.87 KB

Project proposal form.

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eSTEeM-Project-Proposal-Supp-Info-Dec-24-FINAL.pdf	98.2 KB

Project Proposal Supplementary Information.

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20241210-eSTEeM-pre-bidding-workshop-FINAL.pptx	4.57 MB

Workshop presentation.

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Students-as-Partners-in-Scholarship-Framework-FINAL.pdf	278.76 KB

Framework establishing a model for engaging students as partners in scholarship.