Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals

 

Note that as of December 2019 the Mellon-funded Blended Learning Initiative has come to an end. This page remains for historical reference. Please contact David O'Steen or the Helpdesk for assistance with blended learning projects.

Call for proposals for blended learning projects in the humanities, humanistic social sciences, and interdisciplinary or co-designed projects

Please send us your proposals for projects in blended learning and/or digital scholarship. The primary purpose of the project should be to integrate digital tools in order to enhance student learning and/or teaching methodology. Faculty may propose to: design a new course; entirely overhaul an existing course by introducing to it new digital tools; or develop specific course components to facilitate a particular learning goal or to overcome a teaching challenge.

Deadlines for 2018-2019: October 23, December 4, February 19, May 21.

Please send your proposal to Evelina Guzauskyte (eguzausk@wellesley.edu) and David O’Steen (dosteen@wellesley.edu). For examples of previous projects, see the Projects Gallery. You'll also find additional information on the Resources page.

What should the proposal include?

The 1-2 page proposal should include the following:

1. A description of the pedagogical goals in the course. Please be specific in explaining how the selected blended learning methodology and/or the particular digital tools you have in mind will enhance your course.

2. Mention any specific digital tools, platforms, or approaches you have in mind (e.g. digital zines; clickable digital texts; video essays, etc.).

3. Basic information about your course. Is this a new or an existing course? When do you plan to teach it (e.g. Spring 2018)?

4. Your availability to develop the project in collaboration with an LTS staff member (e.g. during the winter break, during the fall semester).

5. A budget. Specify anticipated expenses, such as the number of hours of student research assistance, funds for purchasing materials to prepare the blended learning portion of the course (note: the grant excludes hardware purchases), and any other expenses directly related to the development of the blended learning or the digital scholarship component of the course.

Faculty members are strongly encouraged to consult with David O’Steen from LTS, preferably before the proposal has been submitted or soon after, to discuss project goals and development. Please contact David O’Steen (dosteen@wellesley.edu) to set up this meeting.

All proposals submitted by the announced deadlines are automatically considered for a course development stipend to be paid to the faculty member(s) developing the project. Past stipend amounts have ranged, roughly, from a few hundred dollars to $3,000 for the more involved and extensive projects. Each proposal is carefully considered based on the scale of the task at hand, the time the faculty will need to develop and implement the project, and/or the time the faculty member may need to dedicate to educate herself/himself about the selected digital tools and/or digital pedagogy approach, as may be appropriate.

We are very grateful to ER&D for their contribution to continue supporting blended learning projects this year.

In addition to monetary support, faculty are invited to take advantage of support from LTS, the Office of Institutional Research, and the Quantitative Analysis Institute. In particular, LTS staff will work closely with interested faculty to help conceptualize, create, and manage projects. Support includes instructional design, selection of appropriate technology, and video recording and editing, among others.

Send your completed proposal to Evelina Guzauskyte (eguzausk@wellesley.edu) and David O’Steen (dosteen@wellesley.edu).

Other Funding Opportunities

What other kinds of funding are available through the Blended Learning Initiative?

Blended learning events

In the past, we have co-sponsored events such as talks and workshops, organized by faculty members about topics in blended learning, digital scholarship, and digital humanities. If you would like to bring a speaker to benefit colleagues in your field of study or the college audience more broadly, please apply to us for co-sponsorship.

Faculty conference travel

Funds are also available for faculty conference travel, as long as the purpose of attending the conference is explicitly related to blended learning, digital scholarship, and/or digital humanities. Requests to attend workshops or panels focused on learning/digital scholarship/digital humanities in one’s field of study will also be considered for funding.

Requests to attend workshops or panels focused on blended learning/digital scholarship/digital humanities in one’s field of study can also be considered for funding.

Other requests

Other requests to support the development of blended learning projects will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Helpful Information

Eligible disciplines

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supports work in the humanities and the arts. In addition, social scientists whose work is explicitly historical and/or humanistic and engages qualitative methodologies are also eligible to apply. The examples given by the American Council of Learned Societies may be helpful for the purposes of this initiative: “[…] proposals in the social science fields […] are eligible only if they employ predominantly humanistic approaches and qualitative/interpretive methodologies (e.g., economic history, law and literature, political philosophy, history of psychology).” (http://www.acls.org/programs/overview/). In addition, team-taught courses in the humanities/the arts and disciplines in the sciences or the social sciences are also eligible to apply.

What do we mean by blended learning?

“Blended learning” is understood here as encompassing a broad range of pedagogical approaches where digital tools are used to enhance student learning or faculty teaching, or both. Previously, faculty have developed blended projects that involved the use of video for teaching writing skills; guiding students through small-scale digital scholarship or digital humanities projects as a way of teaching research methods; creating authentic, culturally rich audiovisual materials for foreign language classrooms; involving students in collaborative digital editing projects; and using the flipped classroom technique to increase meaningful student participation in the classroom, among others. One thing we see repeatedly in blended courses, in addition to innovative uses of digital tools, is a meaningful shift in the ways the classroom (and sometimes homework) time is used in order to create additional spaces, as well as new paths, for student learning and intellectual inquiry.