d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education

MIT Council on Educational Technology
Committee on the Undergraduate Program

Call for Preliminary Proposals

Over the past three years MIT has funded a number of exciting educational initiatives with resources provided through the Alex and Brit d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education, Project iCampus, other alumni and School support. At a recent workshop where d’Arbeloff Grant awardees met to share their experiences, some common themes emerged around the importance of improving the first year program and of developing more project-based and active learning activities to enhance conceptual understanding.

With those themes in mind, the Council on Educational Technology (CET), in collaboration with the Committee on the Undergraduate Program (CUP), is again soliciting preliminary proposals for ambitious projects to enhance and potentially transform the educational experience of MIT students. In particular, the CET and the CUP are eager to build on the momentum established by these early successes and by the energy and ideas of faculty, students and staff. (You will find a list of grants that have been funded to date at http://web.mit.edu/cet/init/index.html.) Proposals may come from any member of the MIT community, and there is a special category for proposals from students.

Completed preliminary proposals are due February 18, 2003. Members of the CET Grants Subcommittee and the Committee on the Undergraduate Program will review the preliminary proposals. Applicants who pass the initial screening process will be contacted and invited to submit final proposals, which will be due in late March. Awards will be announced in time for work on projects to begin in late spring or early summer.

Preliminary Proposals for 2003-2004 Educational Projects

The CET and the CUP are particularly interested in ideas and initiatives in the areas described below. However, please do not feel that you are confined to these topics; any preliminary proposal that has educational significance for MIT is welcome. In addition, since the CUP has the authority to approve limited educational experiments, proposals for educational innovation need not conform strictly to current Institute program requirements.

Although some of the educational initiatives funded thus far through this program incorporate educational technology in a substantial way, others do not. The main criterion for success is that a proposal is pedagogically sound, not that it simply enables the use of technology in the classroom.

Areas of interest: (Please see below for details)

• Cooperative initiatives between Schools and departments, especially in the first and second year;
• Initiatives that improve the first year educational experience particularly in the area of project-based and hands-on experiences -- and the transition to the second year;
• Educational impact of portable computing;
• Educational initiatives that include alumni as key participants;
• Improvements in advising and mentoring;
• Increased flexibility for new learning experiences on and off campus.

Criteria:

Preliminary proposals are preferred that include one or more of the following elements:

• Sustainability: The project will lead to long-term commitments by Schools and departments, with a result that is likely to become a regular part of the MIT curriculum. For example, a project's long-term survival should not be dependent upon the continuing involvement of one or more key faculty or key students, and there should be a plan for sustainability after the initial dArbeloff funding terminates.
• Scalability: Initiatives that affect significant numbers of students are preferred. Even so, we recognize that there are types of initiatives (such as intense hands-on or apprenticeship experiences) that may be more practicable as small-scale projects, so proposers should be guided by what makes sense.
• Motivation: the project provides incentives for students and faculty to participate (e.g., it satisfies a requirement or departmental goal; it provides teachers with intrinsic or extrinsic rewards for participating, etc.)
• Collaboration: The project stimulates interactions among faculty across departments or Schools and/or among faculty and other members of the extended MIT community, such as alumni/ae, close industrial partners, research scientists, partners at other institutions, and so on.
• Impact: The project can be expected to have national or global impact and contribute visibly to MIT's leadership role as a top-tier educational institution.
  

• Participation in projects funded by these awards, whether participation is for compensation or as a volunteer, qualifies as "significant use" of MIT Administered Resources under MIT Policies and Procedures. In accordance with the treatment of "significant use," ownership of intellectual property, including copyrights in instructional materials and curriculum, will vest with MIT.
  
• For multiple year projects, funding commitments will be made on a year-by-year basis.
  
• The d’Arbeloff resources are intended primarily for faculty-led initiatives, with the understanding that many such initiatives may involve non-faculty participants. Non-faculty members of the MIT community — including students, student groups, and staff members -- who have an interesting idea are encouraged to submit a preliminary proposal, which can lead to further discussions about appropriate faculty involvement.

Preliminary Proposals:

The preliminary proposals (2-3 pages) should explain the project’s objectives, and how it relates to the areas of interest and the criteria outlined above. A rough estimate of the budget request should be included. The preliminary proposals should be sent to Joanne Straggas (joanne@mit.edu) by February 18, 2003. Please contact Joanne if you would like additional information: (joanne@mit.edu, 3-6322).

If the scope of your project (e.g. relatively small number of students involved) suggests that it might not be appropriate for a d’Arbeloff grant, please keep in mind that in the spring semester there will be an RFP issued for the Alumni Class funds to support educational initiatives

• Cooperative initiatives between Schools and Departments, especially in the first and second year
  The freshman curriculum at MIT is dictated largely by the General Institute Requirements, particularly the Science Core, the HASS-D requirements and the new Communications Requirement. In subsequent years, a student’s curriculum is strongly influenced by his or her major. As a consequence, there is often little motivation for faculty from different departments or schools to collaborate on the development of new subjects. Trends in student interests suggest that interdisciplinary learning may be a much more important part of an MIT education in the future. Proposals are solicited for the development of experimental subjects (or other types of educational experiences) that might illuminate best practices for interdisciplinary learning.


• Educational impact of portable computing
  The MIT Council on Educational Technology is studying the feasibility of deploying a new computing infrastructure where each student has a personal, portable computer, equipped with wireless communication, for use inside and outside class. As part of this study, we hope to fund additional pilots during the 2003-2004 academic year. Support will include providing computers for students involved in the experiment and installing wireless connectivity to the MIT network in classrooms and other common areas as the pilots require. The objective of these pilots is (1) to explore the educational potential of wireless laptop computing; and (2) to better understand the networking and other technical infrastructure required to support wireless portable computing at MIT. We are particularly interested in sponsoring projects that will use these resources to demonstrably enhance the classroom experience and the residential experience.


• Educational initiatives that include alumni as key participants
  There are many successful examples of alumni participation in the MIT educational experience of our current students, in virtually every department at MIT. Many of these examples are the result of direct, personal relationships between faculty and former students. We are seeking proposals for pilot initiatives that will draw MIT alumni more formally into the core educational experience of our undergraduate and graduate students -- in the classroom as project supervisors and as resources in academic advising and career exploration -- with the goal of significantly enhancing the core educational experience for our students. We are particularly interested in innovative ways to harness communication technology to engage alumni nationally and worldwide, not just from the immediate Boston vicinity.


• Improvements in advising and mentoring
  Advising is a perennial hot-button topic in discussions among faculty, students, and staff about the quality of the undergraduate experience. Often, what is actually being articulated is a more complex set of issues, including the need for effective delivery of basic information to students; the important role of faculty and others serving as effective guides through the many worlds of MIT; and the development of first-class career and life advice for students as they explore the choices and pathways open to them. We are interested in proposals addressing any aspects of the advising process both in the freshman and upperclass years, from information technologies that more effectively deliver course and administrative information, to structural changes in the advising process (e.g., residence-based advising, team advising, merging of freshman and upperclass advising, alumni engagement), to innovative ways to foster mentoring relationships between students and faculty.


• Increased flexibility for new learning experiences on and off campus
  We are seeking proposals that explore innovative ways to enable students and faculty to take advantage of compelling research and learning opportunities on and off campus. For example, students could use telecommunication technology to maintain links to campus while visiting peer institutions, industry partners, and research sites, or to enhance collaboration and educational opportunities offered by the Cambridge-MIT Institute or other partnerships. We are interested in proposals both for credit and non-credit experiences involving competitions, internships, apprenticeships, work-study combination, and hands-on learning experiences.


• Initiatives that improve the first year educational experience
  We continue to solicit creative ideas to increase the level of intellectual excitement in the first year program. Initiatives might take the form of subjects that bring the real world into the classroom or that take the learning process into the real world through "discovery-based" experiences. The d’Arbeloff Grants have funded a number of initiatives in this area, including a project-based experimental subject, 12.000: Solving Complex Problems.