Welcome! Thank you for joining us this morning! I m really pleased to be joined this morning by Carey Hatch, our Associate Provost from SUNY, who has been leading the Open SUNY initiatives, including the IITG program. Today s webinar is intended to provide an overview and program orientation, and to highlight two significant changes to this year s RFP. There is a follow up Q&A webinar scheduled for Tuesday, Feb 9 th at 11am the goal for today is that you ll get started on an application, and prepare questions that may arise out of that process that can be responded to in greater depth during the Q&A session. As Michaela mentioned, both the recording and the slides with notes will be available on the commons.suny.edu/iitg website soon after this session, feel free to point your colleagues to that resource. Feel free to jump in and ask a question or use the the chat box, and we ll keep an eye out for questions. 1
Here s the outline of today s agenda. Hopefully everyone has already reviewed the RFP, which details the information and provides links to examples of past projects. Carey will provide some program context, then we ll focus on the mechanics of submitting an online application, and walk through screen shots from the application while describing elements of a strong proposal. Finally we ll walk through the review process and provide a sketch of what to expect if your proposal is funded It s important to have a basic understanding of the post award process because it may impact your budget planning for example, conference and travel support that crosses fiscal year boundaries, when the funds become available, etc. 2
The IITG program was launched in 2012 as part of the Chancellor s Power of SUNY strategic plan. The RFP was developed by members of the SUNY Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology (FACT2). IITGs are funded through University-wide funds AND NOT CONNECTED to Research Foundation grants. This program is available to BOTH faculty and staff at state operated and community colleges. IITG seeks to balance fostering innovation at the individual faculty and staff level by providing seed funds to explore new ideas while at the same time encouraging individuals to align with departments, campuses and the entire system to scale up innovations, and to encourage partnership with SUNY wide services such as Open SUNY Textbook and OER Services, Open SUNY and services provided by COTE (the Center for Online Teaching Excellence) and the CPD (Center for Professional Development). (Toss to Carey) 3
Over the past 5 rounds, IITG s have awarded over 3.5 Million dollars and have been highly effective in fostering cross-campus collaboration. The goal is to foster innovation that can be tested and shared across departments and multiple campuses. Proposals that demonstrate value in discipline-based content with measurable impact received very positive reviews last year. High dollar proposals perceived to have value limited to a single campus without a plan to share or scale the results were not highly ranked. There are two big changes this year on the RFP: 1) You can apply for funds for planning purposes 2) If a proposal is received that aligns with a campus performance improvement fund proposal (which indicates strong campus planning and support), we will consider additional IITG funds at the Tier 3 level up to 100K. 4
The Performance Improvement Fund is somewhat like an IITG on steroids from the campus perspective. IITG s that align with campus proposals are encouraged. 5
The Chancellor s Completion Agenda: These columns list a number of initiatives that continue to support the Power of SUNY and Systemness It is a progressive agenda that specifically calls out alternative credentialing to support certificates and degrees and the Provost has long described his desire to have more content available in modular formats that can be shared to leverage faculty expertise and support both traditional and non-traditional students. My advice is if you re interested in a proposal that exceeds the 60K funding cap is that you: 1) Make sure it has strong support on your campus, and that the campus is committed to aligning to a SUNY agenda that has clear partnerships at a regional level or across a campus sector. 2) Make sure that you re working closely with your campus partners to support your proposal. For example around the funding table, the question often arises, Does this move the dial on impact and innovation? If a campus were to launch a predicative analytics framework that provides for student intervention and test that across multiple campuses a plan that supports that effort would be viewed favorably. Or if a campus or campuses were to work together to leverage MOOCs for Prior Learning Assessment or academic credit that would be considered innovative. 6
But at the end of the day if you don t have access to the campus infrastructure that enables use of the software or services or if you don t have access to the people on campus who can support MOOCs with video production or instructional design you can t get very far. So any plan that exceeds the funding cap has GOT to address all the moving parts and pieces of a large scale idea and couple it to other resources. 6
We borrowed the key phrase from the Provost s Round Five Announcement letter because both the Chancellor and Provost have suggested leveraging online content that can be combined in more efficient and effective ways to support learning. An example would be to leverage our contract with Coursera to modularized content and make it available for different purposes across curriculums. Now that we have some collective experience with how to produce MOOCs, the funding scope has been narrowed to support MOOCs that create an on ramp to an existing program, or MOOCs that can be used more like textbooks or supplemental material or for flipped applications. In summary: projects that support access to higher education, degree completion and support student success are all highly valued. 7
All full time SUNY faculty/staff are eligible to apply for an IITG. Adjunct faculty can participate, as long they are partnered with a full time faculty or staff member and have letters of support from their home department to ensure project completion. Multiple proposals from a campus or individuals are welcome but I ll pass along a word of caution that IITG s have a tendancy to take on a life of their own and get pretty time consuming so keep that in mind if you re part of more than one proposal. Campus guidelines vary quite a bit across SUNY, which is why the online application form requires identification of key support personnel at the local campus level. 8
A quick word about FACT2 Reps. There are formal lines of communication between SUNY and campus administration, but it s a bigger challenge for the Office of the SUNY Provost to receive grassroots communication, and that s where the Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology plays an important role. If you don t know who your campus rep is, please to click on the link in the RFP to identify and reach out to them. There is no requirement for a campus rep to sign off or review a proposal that s being submitted, but it s good for them to know about campus activity to assist as more connective tissue to resources that might be helpful to you or your campus. 9
Because these grants are funded through University wide funds distribution, they follow state budget cycle timelines. The goal is to get awards announced prior to the CIT Conference to provide another avenue to connect with people from different campuses to project plan. Once the awards are announced, state account numbers will be assigned on a project basis as part of the MOU. Be aware that funds may not be available until ALL University Wide program funds are released in the fall. If your project requires expenditures prior to the fall, you ll need to make arrangements on your campus to backstop or forward fund a portion of the grant for expenditures. You can make a journal transfer from your IITG account to whoever loaned the funds at a later date. If you re used to working on the RF side of the house, this will strike you as unusual and we re aware of that. We ll work with you to make sure everyone has an understanding of the state funds process, because we learned a lot of administrative lessons over the past five years! 10
If you are seeking project renewal funds there are some additional things to consider in the RFP. This is particularly true if you re seeking renewal funds for a round two project that has not yet posted outcomes. (Walk through bullets) 11
There are two significant changes to the RFP this year. 1) We will allow funds to be used as planning grants if that planning results in tangible shovel ready projects for the next funding cycle 2) Under very narrow conditions, we will enable a strong proposal that is clearly collaborative and aligns with SUNY EXCELS Performance Improvement Planning, to exceed the 60K Tier 3 Funding Cap up to 100,000. This move was to enable campuses to build on the Excels framework, but the Innovative Instruction Research Council and the Office of the SUNY Provost Staff remain committed to maximizing opportunities at a small scale, and obviously if large scale funds are awarded, that impacts funds available for smaller scale opportunities so it s a bit of a balancing act. 12
Anyquestions before I walk through the online application? 13
Here s the entire application process in a nutshell (quick walk through) 14
You can either logon with your previous account credentials, or create a new account. If you created an account in the past, but forgot your password, just click on the Forgot your Password link and the system will send your password to the email address on record in the system. In case you were wondering, we share this online application site with the FACT2 Awards Committee, so it s co-branded 15
When creating a new account, please fill out the fields. An asterisk indicates a required field. 16
Once you login, you get to the application page landing page to select a funding tier 17
After this round, we ll likely have more than 200 IITG funded projects tagged on the website. In order to both help the reviewers, and the administration of these grants short titles that accurately reflect the project, along with a very brief abstract that describes the project are helpful. 18
The one sentence description is for the website and is helpful during the IIRC review. Under the funding request please make sure the number matches the bottom line of your budget. The total funding request is the amount of money your requesting up to the tier level maximum. 19
For Tier 3 only, please check the box if you re exceeding the 60K cap If being proposed as a planning grant, please also indicate that. Use the pull down menu to select your campus If you re seeking a renewal to a previous project, please indicate the title of the project and the funding received. 20
On a number of campuses, we ve found a sponsored programs person fills out the application on behalf of the faculty or staff member that will serve as the principal investigator so even if it s repetitive, please fill in all the fields. 21
The instructions layout how the character countdown works - it s pretty much the same as twitter. Also it s a good idea to occassionally his save as draft but DO NOT submit until you re ready to upload the final document. Most of the fields offer the option to provide text or upload a document. The documents are automatically saved as PDF s for review. Please keep doucments succinct we know that many of you have 20 page CV s or longer... But for this grant it s only necessary to have a brief CV. 22
You have the opportunity to list Co-PI s, and some projects have had key stakeholders in the form of vendor partnerships or work with agencies external to the campus, and this is where you would indicate who those people are. The bullet points provide some guidance for the type of information you may want to include here. If you have multiple CO-PI s or collaborators, just combine the information into a single document prior to upload high level details are fine, such as a paragraph describing each collaborator s title, role and function on the team 23
Depending on your campus policies and culture, it may or may not be necessary to have your provost or chief academic officer endorse the application. (The exception would be seeking funds beyond the 60K funding cap, in which case you want strong endorsement from your campus indicated alignment with accepted campus strategy). If working across multiple campuses, you d want to upload a letter of support from people at each campus. If you have more than three, just combine letters into a single document for upload. 24
CAIT Themes 25
View of website search 26
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Make sure you read and insert an I agree to the statement that explains that you must use or encumber all the funds by June 30,2018 Can t underscore this enough if you have travel plans or other expenses that go past the FY boundary, you ll need to identify an internal campus mechanism to work that out. We can help guide you on that, but it s up to you to coordinate that process. 28
Rather than relying on centralized email lists, we ve discovered that it s easier to ask for contact names and email addresses if you re awarded an IITG, we ll CC your senior folks to let them know. Reviewers will want to know how you intend to measure project objectives and learning outcomes. It s helpful to separate student learning from technology effectiveness the two often get combined and confused. If you re using a new technology, determine how you ll describe whether it s an effective solution is the solution in fact, technology in service of pedagogy? If a particular technology is anticipated to boost student learning outcomes, how will you measure that? Much like Middle States, this grant doesn t tell you what to measure, it expects that you ll describe what you re looking for and how you ll measure it. But whatever your approach, keep in mind how much time is available to measure and report in the grant cycle. The reviewers understand the aggressive nature of the timeline, so be realistic about your assessment expectations. Finally if you ever intend to publish your results which is an option that most of you will want to preserve, be sure to work with your campus IRB officers to seek an expedited review BEFORE you collect any data. Please 29
be sure to comply with all the regulations, and remember it takes time for these reviews This is why we recommend you begin work on that aspect as soon as you receive an award, or perhaps even while you re preparing a proposal. 29
The budget worksheet is available in the application materials 30
Here s the top portion of the form that describes personnel expenses. 31
Here s the bottom half of the form that includes the OTPS expenses The bottom line in green describes the total funding request. This is the number you re going to transfer back to the top of the application form. The yellow bottom line is the amount of the campus match that s required depending on the tier. A Tier 2 project that funds up to 20,000 must include a campus match of up to 25% But that s 25% of the total request so for example, if your project requires $15,000 (not 20K), you ll be matching 25% of that funding request or a minimum of $3,750 in in-kind campus support. You can include conference presentations in your budget. This includes CIT presentations, but please keep in mind that SUNY works hard to keep those expenses to a minimum. 32
One of the condition for the grants is for you to choose a Creative Commons license to share your work in the SUNY Learning Commons. There is a link embedded for you to learn more about the CC process. In addition to openly sharing your project outcomes, you ll be required to file a mid-year report but the reviewers will want to know more about how you plan to actually document and share your results. Will you be videotaping segments and posting them on YouTube? Will you be creating a report? Will the report have any unique features? Do you plan on presenting your results at non-suny conferences to share a solution within your discipline? The communication plan is a paragraph or two to describe your commitment to sharing your outcomes with your peers. 33
While we re talking about campus matches and administrative and budget questions this is a good time to plug the FAQ section of the website. 34
Please check the FAQ section first if you have a question about the Application, Budget or Administrative processes we think we ve got most of the common questions and issues covered, but we re happy to receive feedback and update more information on these pages just let us know! 35
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The applicants last round asked for more details on how the proposals are reviewed. Each proposal is reviewed at least 3 times. The reviewers see all the application information, identity is not stripped from the proposal however, the reviewers are blind to each other. Obviously we don t assign reviews where there is an obvious conflict of interest, and we work with the reviewers to enable them to identify and swap out reviews if they identify a conflict. You and your colleagues are welcome to serve as a reviewer. Just click on the Become a Reviewer button on the IITG site. We hope to build out a bigger pool of reviewers to better match thematic interests with reviewer expertise in order to increase the quality of the feedback. It is a two stage review. A peer review enables each reviewer to assign a score based on a rubric that mirrors the RFP. The scores are then ranked and escalated to the Office of the Provost for a secondary review. A new Innovative Instruction Research Council is being formed as part of Open SUNY, and it is anticipated that the Provost will be seeking nominations for this council in time to assist the Provost Staff with final IITG recommendations. 37
The Awards process is timeline and what to expect is outlined here. After decisions are made, agreements are signed, and account numbers are assigned. All funds MUST be expended within the state fiscal year boundaries. 38
You are able to make budget revisions post award, but need to request permission if a revision exceeds 20% of the total funding request within the OTPS or PSR category. All awards are subject to audit. Also please be very cautious if you budget any type of participation incentive. You can t give away laptops or ipads or engage in random games of chance with State taxpayer funds. If a vendor supplies these items in-kind, that s fine. Some of our awardees provide travel to CIT or CPD points as an incentive. If you have questions about incentives 39
These deliverables are all outlined in the RFP and have been touched on already, but the last bullet makes a point in reminding everyone to document their project, and don t forget to take pictures along the way. 40
The IITG administration team is here to help. Please use the email alias so if I m traveling or unavailable others will be monitoring your email to assist with any questions that arise. Monthly updates are provided, which you are responsible for forwarding to your collaborators. 41
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