Teaching Award Application Guidelines
Learning and Teaching in Business provides these guidelines to assist applicants applying for awards.
Applicants should detail their teaching cycle in their application, how they implement that cycle and evidence of its effectiveness on student learning.
Evidence over a sustained period of time, from a broad range of sources, is expected.
Evidence supporting the application should:
- demonstrate the sustained impact of the actions taken by the applicant (i.e. over an entire teaching load and teaching period and not units selected from an entire teaching load for a period being considered);
- demonstrate that the applicants practice goes beyond the expectations of what is effective teaching
- triangulate evidence where possible from multiple lenses(e.g. use independent peer/expert feedback as well as student feedback and self reflection)
- reference whether feedback is solicited/unsolicited and the date received. Where independent feedback is provided the applicant must indicate whether the feedback was or was not solicited by the applicant and the date the feedback was received.
- describe the teaching context clearly including unit names as well as unit codes, number of students taught/responding
- detail the role of the applicant vis-À-vis others in the teaching team where innovation or achievement is indicated (e.g. Unit of Study Coordinator versus lecturer for three weeks)
- make use of original USE or other equivalent data. Any quantitative evaluative data may be audited by the panel, and such references and dating of data is mandatory.
- Include peer-review of any aspect of the applicants teaching activities.
- Summary Statement: applicants should use the summary in support of the teaching statement to clarify the teaching context: detailing total no. of tutorials/lectures (as appropriate) being taught and over what timeframe, class sizes, no. of students enrolled versus no. of student respondents to unit evaluations, sole lecturer/tutor or team teaching, no. of Citations received etc. In addition, the summary should include a statement of any challenges, how these have been responded to and a summary of the impact of these changes.
- The reference needs to support the claims made by the applicant in the application. The referee should therefore be familiar with the work of the applicant to do this successfully. Giuseppe Carabetta's reference for Mark Fisher's 2009 Tutor Award application is a good example of a reference supporting the applicant's claims.
- Keep within the page limit prescribed ie two pages for tutor award applications means either one two page reference OR two single page references. Advise your referee on the restriction on length. If referees provide two page references use only one or request that both cull to one page.
- Members of the Selection Panel requested to provide references by applicants are able to do so but must then forfeit their right to vote on that application at the meeting.
Support for writing an application
- Seek assistance early in writing your application. Winning applications have typically been through a number of revised drafts.
- If you are unable to attend the Learning and Teaching in Business award writing workshop seek individual assistance from Learning and Teaching in Business, or a previous winner.
- Make use of the following resources:
- Documenting teaching effectiveness
- Structuring the argument in your application - ITL
- VC Award for Outstanding Teaching
- Providing evidence for teaching-related awards: possible data sources - ITL
- Making use of data from unit of study evaluations - ITL
- Selection Criteria Guidelines for Evidence (adapted UNSW Nominees Information Kit)
- Peer review for teaching awards