Guidance on submitting a successful bid

1. Guidance on submitting a successful bid Institutional approaches to curriculum design Sarah DaviesProgramme Manager, JISC

2. What you need to get started: three pieces of paper • Circular 05/08: Call for projects on institutional approaches to curriculum design

3. What you need to get started • Circular 05/08: Appendices A-D

4. What you need to get started • Briefing paper to support Circular 05/08: Institutional approaches to curriculum design

5. What you need to get started • All are available from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2008/04/circular508.aspx

6. The things we always say • Read the documentation carefully, especially the circular itself (JISC Circular 05/08: Full text) • That includes information on what we’re looking for, what we expect projects to do, what we want in bids, and how the bids will be assessed. • Be honest with yourself about whether your good idea fits squarely with what we’re looking for • If you’re not sure, get in touch

7. Who can bid? • HE institutions in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland • All FE institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland • FE institutions in England with more than 400 HE FTEs. • For English institutions, the proposed project should concentrate on HE provision • Single institutions or consortia • Only the lead partner has to meet the criteria above

8. Fit to programme objectives • Key aspects: • Curriculum design processes • Technology • Transforming learning opportunities • Addressing a strategic challenge

9. A vision for curriculum design • Curriculum design processes: • Efficient and flexible • Involve lecturers, learners, employers etc • Innovation and creativity in response to demands • Produce supportive documentation, not constraining • Enable innovation • Incorporate feedback from delivery • Well-understood and appropriately supported by technology • Suited to institutional mission • Support embedding of high-level commitments eg employability • Agile

10. A vision for curriculum design • Technology (and information systems and structure): • Design tools available • Provide information on learner requirements • Capture relationships between eg courses, learning outcomes, and assignments • Enable effective recombination of units of learning • Support flexible curricula and credit transfer • Support sharing of information on learning opportunities • Support information flows of course-related information, information on learner achievement, time and location constraints

11. A vision for curriculum design • Learning opportunities • Meet diverse and changing learner needs • Flexible and learner-defined curricula • Support development of effective learners and workers • Include assessment and feedback which meets learner, staff and employer needs • Support the development and evidencing of skills • Support widening participation • Identify the parts of the vision that your project is aiming to address – you don’t have to tackle them all • But you should tackle something under each of learning and teaching practice, technology and standards, and strategy and policy

12. What is the issue or challenge you’re addressing? • Bids are usually weakest on this area • If there’s a problem with how things are done now, what is it, and what are the symptoms? • If you want to move your institution in a certain direction, why? • Include a summary of the evidence • Demonstrate its strategic significance for the institution • Demonstrate high-level backing • How will changing your curriculum design processes help? • Note that only one bid per institution will be accepted • Letters of support should say why they think the project is valuable and what the institution/organisation will do to support it

13. Workplan • Describe your current curriculum design processes • If you’re not sure where to start, try comparing what you do with the canonical models produced by the COVARM project – see briefing paper • Which aspects of the processes are within the project’s power to change? • What constraints do they place on the activities and timings of the project?

14. Workplan • Outline work plan – what will you do? • Mix of narrative and tables/diagram is usually clearest • At least two milestones per year • Project management arrangements are key • Include risk assessment • How do the activities lead to the deliverables? • It’s amazing how unclear these can be – make sure it’s understandable and unambiguous to someone outside the planning team • Watch out for terms like ‘framework’, ‘system’ or ‘tools’

15. Workplan • Who will work on the project? • Individuals and roles if possible; roles if not • How does their role on the project link to their day job? • Who will be involved in project management? • Cover roles across the institution – see para 23 • Have you got a high-level champion, and how will they be engaged in practice? • Who will be participating in programme activities, and how many days? • Clearly identify where you need to recruit

16. Engagement with the community • How will you work your stakeholders? • Include any existing user needs analysis • How will you disseminate your findings? • Be realistic and targeted • How will you evaluate the innovations? • See information in para 30 and the link there • Try to demonstrate rather than simply state a willingness to work with the support and synthesis project • eg by suggesting areas in which you’d like their input • But if not, stating it is better than nothing! • There is a commitment from these projects to share the findings of the initial baselining exercise with the support project

17. Budget and value for money • Be as clear as you can on who and what the funds are paying for • Make sure there is some link between the budget, workplan, and staff working on the project • Is there enough time allocated for project management? • Don’t ask for significant funds for hardware and software • Cost the bid with TRAC full economic costing (HEIs) or your usual cost model (non-HEIs) • Request JISC funding for a proportion of this • Stay within the budget of £400,000 • Make an institutional contribution in line with the benefits you institution will derive from the project • For this call, significant institutional benefits would be anticipated • But don’t bankrupt yourself – must be feasible

18. Previous experience of the project team • Ensure you provide a brief summary of the experience of your proposed team in the main text of the bid • Project management, curriculum design • Back it up with further information (brief CVs etc) in the appendices • Previous projects successfully delivered don’t have to be external, but it’s helpful to give an idea of scale and how these are similar or different to the proposed work • What role did the team members have in any projects cited? • If the bid is from a consortium: • Need supporting letters from the partners • Need to demonstrate that the issues of working together have been thought through: who’s doing what? • Make it clear why this partnership makes sense for this project • How will new or less experienced partners be supported?

19. Tips and suggestions • Get early buy-in from senior management to reduce the chance of two bids being produced from your institution • Ask someone from outside the bidding team to review the bid: • Is it clear what you’re planning to do and deliver? • Score against the evaluation criteria and provide feedback • Check you’ve included everything requested in the structure of proposals, including things you don’t have a good answer for. • Check you’ve addressed all the evaluation criteria, adjusting wording if necessary to help evaluators pick out relevant sections. • Evaluators are only human – good, clear layout and signposting helps • Don’t quote back chunks of text from JISC: demonstrate your own understanding • If you’re planning to build on previous work, say how, and how the new work differs

20. Some final ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s • Check the checklist at paragraph 55 • BUT note that deadline for submission is noon on Thursday 19 June 2008 • Don’t put any key information beyond the 10-page limit • Information which should be in the main body and is in an appendix will be disregarded • The most commonly misplaced bits of information are the budget, summary of previous experience, and fit with institutional strategies • Check over the page layout of your bid once you’ve converted it to pdf – things can jump over onto a new page • Submit your bid well in advance of the deadline. Late bids (even a matter of minutes) will not be accepted

21. Further information • Contact Georgia Slade for enquiries about the bid submission process: • g.slade@jisc.ac.uk, 0117 9317385 • For all other enquiries, contact Sarah Knight: • s.knight@jisc.ac.uk, 07747 767944