Grants to support the use of Wattle within Colleges
How to apply for these $5000 grants
- College executive are asked to identify College staff who are keen and suitable to apply for grants and be involved in projects supporting the migration to Wattle from WebCT (or other applications)
- Closing date for this round of grants is 1 April 2009
- Contact Karen Visser on karen.visser@anu.edu.au or (612) 58279 with details of interested staff and a short outline of the grant outcomes
Background
The Division of Information is offering a total of 8-10 grants, each of approx $5000 to support the implementation of Wattle within participating Colleges. These grants are aimed at assisting Colleges to migrate to Wattle in a way which best supports the needs of each College. It is envisaged that College staff who are successful in applying for grants will become part of the growing community involved in the ongoing development of Wattle.
Possible Uses for the Grants
Each College will determine how/if a grant might be useful to meet their specific needs. Colleges may wish to augment grants where necessary in order to achieve specific project outcomes which are broader than each grant will allow or to apply for multiple grants.All grants will include intensive training in both Wattle tools and also exploring its teaching and learning potential. These grants might be used in a number of ways including, but not exclusively:
- promote teaching and learning excellence within the College using Wattle eg
- funding a College staff member for ~80-100 hours to learn Wattle in depth, and then deliver either small group training or 1-to-1 sessions within the College during the Semester 2 migration period
- developing training materials and online user manuals for discipline and/or College specific needs such as using and adapting Wattle tools to teach languages
- research projects to investigate best practice teaching eg
- increasing student interaction using the discussion forum in large first year courses
- using Wattle tools to support a culture of academic honesty
- technical projects to further develop, tailor or better integrate modules/applications into Wattle eg
- creating College themes to apply to the Wattle template
- Colleges may have an interest in a particular application which they would like to see incorporated into Wattle.
- other projects welcome
Who might apply for grants?
These grants might be of interest to full time, part time or casual general and academic teaching staff, including tutors. Grants can be used:
- as a direct payment to part time or casual staff for the additional hours worked for the project
- to pay casual staff to back fill for full time staff members involved in the project
- for the purchase of equipment to support the project
What will it involve?
- negotiating outcomes and timeframes for completion of the project with the College and the Wattle Support Group within the Division of Information
- most projects will take + or - 80-100 hours. Some may be longer or shorter. After an initial period of intensive Wattle group training, working hours and timeframes are flexible within the grant outcomes.