Teaching & Learning Award

About the Award

This award recognizes transformative improvements in the campus teaching and learning culture. It honors replicable, sustainable, technology-based programs and practices that have helped move institutions or systems toward effective, enterprise-wide, learner-centered instructional systems.

The award is designed to encourage development of new collegiate learning environments that harness the power of information technology to improve the quality of teaching and learning, contain or reduce rising costs, and provide greater access to higher education. This program is expected to contribute to the creation of a base of accepted practice and principles for support of learner-centered teaching and learning. Successful applications will include compelling evidence of the program's impact, with measures for such documentation.

Winners of this award are selected by the Teaching and Learning Award Committee, with strategic oversight from the EDUCAUSE Recognition Committee.

This award program is sponsored by WebCT, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner.

Systemic Progress in Teaching and Learning Award Winners

Guidelines and Criteria

Awards will be made to institutions or systems that have harnessed information technology to bring innovative, strategic, sustainable change to their educational culture so as to:

• improve the quality of teaching and learning,
• advance the use of flexible, learner-centered instruction,
• contain or reduce rising costs,
• offer effective new assessment tools and mechanisms

Up to two awards may be given each year. Successful applications will provide evidence of innovative, mission-driven, replicable projects that have transformed teaching and learning through such elements as:

• guidelines for project selection, management, assessment, and resource allocation;
• methods for assessing institutional readiness for change;
• definition of infrastructure (both technical and institutional) that is both necessary and sufficient for institutional transformation;
• model processes for enterprise-wide strategic planning for teaching and learning;
• policies or processes to ensure the integration of curriculum planning, course definition and approval, and use of technology;
• development of explicit new teaching and learning goals;
• processes to engage faculty in dialogue about teaching and learning and appropriate support structures;
• mechanisms for coordinating efforts between multiple departments;
• new decision-making processes;
• structured, credible assessment processes that document project impact.

The successful award application will

• reflect a thorough understanding of the environment (mission, culture, strategic goals, critical needs);
• demonstrate explicit elements that make the project learner-centered, sustainable, scalable, and replicable within the same institution or at other institutions; and
• embody defined best practices, developed by the applicant or by other institutions.

Eligibility

• Only one application may be submitted per campus.
• The applying institution need not be a member of EDUCAUSE.
• Applications may not come from institutions represented on the EDUCAUSE Teaching and Learning Award Committee or on the Recognition Committee.

Recognition

Award winners are recognized at the EDUCAUSE annual conference. Winning institutions receive plaques specially designed for this program by Colorado artist John Haertling, along with complimentary travel, housing, and registration for one representative at the conference at which the presentation takes place. Winner representatives are invited to describe their initiatives and applications in a conference session. Descriptions of the winning environments are made available on the EDUCAUSE Web site and/or in print publications, and will be highlighted as award winners in the EDUCAUSE Effective Practices and Solutions database.

Applications

This award will be discontinued in 2006.