Preparing Curriculum Grants

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Preparing Curriculum Grants

• Amy Chang
• Director, Education
• American Society for Microbiology
• achang_at_asmusa.org

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Plan for Sunday Eve.

• Five steps to curriculum grantsmanship
• Define outcome and deliver assignment
• In teams, brainstorm 2 outcomes in first two
  years
• Demonstrate backward design move from outcome
  to objective and goal
• Define goal and objective
• In teams, identify objective for defined outcome

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Five Steps to Curriculum Grantsmanship

• Identify problem or need
• Define measurable objectives, feasible plan,
  deliverable outcomes, and plan for continuous
  evaluation improvement
• Start small, remain focused and evaluate
• Communicate results and showcase successes
• Identify and surround yourself with experts and
  allies

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Outcome

• In education, item such as a benchmark, report,
  laboratory session, classroom activity, teachable
  unit, learning module that is directed to a
  student group for a purpose.
• In business, its a program, product or service
  that serves a markets needs.

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Sunday Assignment

• Identify two outcomes that you would like to see
  at end of two years.
• What problem will it address?
• What does it look like?
• Is it a benchmark, report, activity, module,
  unit, program?
• What audience group will be served?
• How will it be done?
• Who will do it?
• How will I know when its done?
• What benefit will be derived from its completion?
• How will it be used to move to the next step?

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Objective

• A statement that can be (1) measured in time and
  space, (2) delegated to someone, and (3) assigned
  a deadline.
• An objective contains ACTION (verb) and TIME (set
  a deadline). It may include QUANTITY (frequency
  or words such as all, none, most), QUALITY (how
  well its done) and

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Goal

• Overarching statement that leads and sets the
  direction for institutional planning
• It is not measured in time or space. It is the
  result of many and much.

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Elements of Curriculum Proposal

• Identify problem and learning goal
• Identify team members including evaluator
• Identify existing or proposed teachable units
• Conduct pilot studies and continuing revisions
• Develop teaching assistants and faculty
• Develop administrators and acquire institutional
  buy-in
• Disseminate and publish results (advance
  scholarship of teaching)

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END SUNDAY EVE
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1 Problem With Proposals

• Not focused, too diffuse

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Typical Problems

• No clear objectives or outcomes delivered
  regularly
• No clear audience group too many types of
  students served
• Plan doesnt support objectives
• Plan doesnt utilize best practices in teaching
  and learning
• Plan doesnt utilize existing exemplary materials

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Typical Problems

• No or weak plan to pilot test
• No or weak plan to scale up (e.g. weak plan to
  test, gather data, revise, retest gather new
  data, revise, and continue cycle )
• No or weak plan to gather student learning
  outcomes (e.g. pre versus post and controlled
  versus test groups)

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Typical Problems

• Weak plan to institutionalize program
• No plan to develop teaching assistants and
  faculty
• No plan to showcase results and develop faculty
  colleagues and administrators
• No provision for institutional review board (IRB)
  policies and practices (treatment of human and
  animal subjects).

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Typical Problems

• No or weak plan to disseminate results
• Locally - no plan to share results with
  colleagues, departments, colleges within a
  university
• Regionally no plan to share results with peers
  in state or local region
• Nationally no plan to share results at
  scientific meetings and peer-reviewed journals

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Identify the Problem Tied to Student Learning

• Understanding of concepts
• Gap in skills
• Recall of subject
• Application of concepts
• More practice
• More examples
• Retention of concepts

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Identify Measurable Objectives

• Objectives contain ACTION (verb), quantity
  (frequency such as all, none, or most), quality
  (how well its done) and time (set deadlines or
  frequencies)
• By June 30, DEVELOP and IMPLEMENT and error free
  software module that pre-fills standardized parts
  of the customer satisfaction form, so that the
  average form completion time is shortened by at
  least two minutes.