Learning Analytics Mini Grants CFP Due 6/2/23

UMBC's Division of Information Technology (DoIT), in partnership with the Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce the call for proposals for the 2023 Learning Analytics (LA) Mini Grants. This initiative aims to encourage, identify, and exchange effective practices to enhance student success and retention.

The mini grants are specifically designed to address two key areas of focus:

1. Student Success and Retention: The grants welcome proposals that explore the relationships between activities and learning in one course and outcomes in other courses. By investigating these connections, instructors can gain insights into strategies that can improve student success and retention rates. This research is particularly crucial for courses with low success rates, critical progression points, or those imparting fundamental skills required for success in the major or program.
2. Faculty Development and Support: Recipients of the mini grants will receive a $2,000 professional development award, renewable annually, directed to their faculty member or department's PeopleSoft chart string account. In addition to access to warehouse data (REX), recipients will also receive support for Tableau, a powerful data visualization tool. Furthermore, participants will be expected to present a report at the conclusion of their project, and they will have the opportunity to engage with the LA Community of Practice. These grants also provide an opportunity for recipients to use their results to compete for the prestigious Hrabowski Innovation Fund award.

The LA Mini Grants build upon the university's commitment to utilizing data-informed insights to improve student outcomes. In line with this objective, the Provost's office, in collaboration with DoIT's Analytics & Instructional Technology groups, has been organizing workshops on supporting student success throughout the academic year. These workshops, illustrated by our Spring 2023 lineup below, have covered various topics faculty may want to explore further in their own mini-grant proposals:

• Democratizing the Doer Effect: Using AI to Scale Learning by Doing (2/24/23)
• The Case of Test-Optional Admissions: A Pandemic Natural Experiment (3/3/23)
• How Analytics Informs UMBC's Strategic Planning (4/7/23)
• How Analytics Improved a Dept's Student Success & Enrollment (5/5/23)

These presentations have provided valuable knowledge and resources to support faculty in their understanding and utilization of data to support their pedagogy, and the meeting recordings linked through each event are available for anyone with a UMBC account.

The LA Mini Grants program presents an exceptional opportunity for faculty members to enhance their teaching practices and contribute to the university's commitment to student success and retention. Interested faculty members are invited to submit their applications by Friday, June 2, 2023. The application package should include a brief abstract that could be published on the UMBC website if accepted, a maximum three-page research project proposal, and a letter of support from their department chair. For further inquiries or to submit applications, please contact Robert Carpenter, John Fritz, or Tom Penniston.

For anyone interested in an additional professional development opportunity outside of (or in addition to) the LA Mini Grants, Indiana University Bloomington will host their 5th Annual Learning Analytics Summit virtually next week (5/17-5/19), and participation is 100% free.

By Tom Penniston, with initial draft generated by ChatGPT

Image by katemangostar