Applying for Institute Fellowships

Applications are now open for our next cohort of Institute Fellowships

Closing date for applications:

• Monday 13 February 2023 (11:59pm) 

All ITL Fellowships should align with one or more of Our Future Teaching and Learning strategic priorities:

• Enhancing the quality of our teaching
• Transformative student experiences
• Realising students' potential
• Education for global leadership
• Lifelong and flexible learning

There are two additional themes this year:  

• Enabling the student voice
• Assessment and feedback

In addition, there will be two fellowships co-funded by the VP Research focusing on: 

• The teaching-research nexus (research-led teaching)
• The teaching-research nexus (teaching-led research)

The Institute of Teaching and Learning (ITL) is excited to open recruitment for our fourth cohort of ITL Fellows. These Fellowships are open to Academic, Professional and Technical Services colleagues across the University, and offer the opportunity to work on a strategically-aligned project to enhance teaching and learning, working in partnership with students to bring about positive change that can be embedded across the University.  You can find out more about our current Institute Fellows and read the reports of our inaugural cohort elsewhere on this website.  

The Fellowships will begin in September 2023 and can be structured according to either of the following models: 

• a commitment of 0.1 FTE averaged over a 22 month Fellowship term (September 2023 to June 2025)
• a commitment of 0.2 FTE averaged over a 10 month Fellowship term (September 2023 to June 2024)

Other Fellowship structures/timescales may be possible; alternative models should be discussed with the ITL team and/or clearly outlined in your proposal.

What you'll do as a Fellow

ITL Fellowships provide colleagues with the time, focus and support to work on a project which enhances an aspect of our teaching and learning delivery across the University. Your Fellowship project may be student-focused, or may be focused on staff support and development in a way that benefits the student experience. You will work closely with the Institute's team and its wider teaching and learning network in order to develop and deliver your project. Fellows will also be able to take up additional development opportunities and become an ongoing member of the Institute, helping to develop excellent teaching and learning practice across the University in line with Our Future's strategic goals.

You will be paired with a Student Partner Intern, who will work with you collaboratively as you plan, develop and undertake the activities of your project, providing their invaluable perspective and helping you to drive forward your project to achieve its aims and objectives.

We welcome individual and joint applications, and will offer the School/Service (or equivalent) of successful applicants £10,000 to assist with releasing them from some other commitments; Fellows will also have access to up to £2,500 for essential project-related costs. (Total amounts are per project, whether individual Fellowship or joint application, in which case the £10,000 buyout would be shared across relevant Schools/Services). As part of your Expression of Interest you must include confirmation of support from your Head of School, Director of Service or appropriate equivalent and agreement to funding and time implications. Applicants are strongly encouraged to discuss the implications and feasibility of undertaking an ITL Fellowship with their line manager and Head of Discipline/Department/Service before making an application, and to identify the most appropriate timescale of Fellowship for their project.

Eligibility

We invite applications from Academic, Professional and Technical Services colleagues from across the University. 

In order to be eligible for the Fellowship, in most cases colleagues must be on an existing permanent contract with the University or a fixed-term contract that extends up to or beyond the end of the Fellowship term; however, if you are interested in this opportunity but have different contractual arrangements with the University please contact the ITL team on teaching.learning@manchester.ac.uk to discuss your circumstances and eligibility.

Strategic themes and areas of focus for 2023

The projects undertaken by Cohort 4 Fellows should be strategically aligned with the themes for Teaching and Learning set out in Our Future:

• Enhancing the quality of our teaching
• Transformative student experiences
• Realising students' potential: 'Manchester made me'
• An education for global leadership
• Lifelong and flexible learning

For 2023 we would particularly welcome project proposals which focus on the following four priorities:

1. The teaching-research nexus (research-led teaching)
2. The teaching-research nexus (teaching-led research)
3. Enabling the student voice
4. Assessment and feedback

Priorities 1. and 2. Exploring the teaching-research nexus

Within this year's cohort we are recruiting to two strategic ITL Fellowships to consider the relationship between research and teaching at the University of Manchester. 

The teaching-research nexus, as recently explored in a report by the British Academy (29/06/22), is often assumed to be both real and positive – but is hard to define and potentially under threat. In 2017 the Russell Group also provided a high level statement of the benefits of learning within a research-intensive environment (pdf), and in the same year Advance HE published case study examples: What does Research-Informed Teaching look like? | Advance HE (advance-he.ac.uk).

Our own Our Future strategic plan stresses the benefits to students and staff of teaching and learning in a research-rich environment, but in rather general terms – for instance, our Teaching and Learning theme suggests that:

'Our students and staff benefit from the interaction between teaching and research; teaching-led research is as important as research-led teaching. We will go beyond students engaging with current research in the advanced stages of a degree, to integrate teaching and research at all levels. Students will encounter research leaders and be encouraged to develop and use research skills from the start…Our teaching methods and assessments will allow students to engage actively in research and critical enquiry.'

Our Research and Discovery theme mirrors the Teaching and Learning theme statement by including 'Inspiring student learning with our research-intensive environment' as one of its four priorities.

The Vice-President for Research and Vice-President for for Teaching, Learning and Students have therefore provided strategic funding for two ITL Fellows to explore this topic, one primarily through a research lens and the other through a teaching lens. These posts will run concurrently, either over one year or across two as appropriate, as per the other Fellowships in this cohort; we welcome joint proposals from colleagues examining this through a teaching and a research lens respectively, or individual applications focusing on one of these which might then be combined after the interview stage.

Applicants' ideas on the shape and aims of this project theme are welcome – we are particularly interested in:

• reflections on the relationships between teaching and research;
• the directionality or bi-directionality of this relationship;
• demonstrations of the benefits and impacts their interaction brings for students and staff;
• suggestions for how we can improve our articulation and delivery of these benefits in our Manchester context.

Previous work on this topic led to the development of a range of case-studies and videos: see Learning through research. We would like to see an update of these case-studies, and potentially the gathering and development of additional and more diverse case-studies, as one joint output of the projects.

Priority 3. Enabling the student voice

Under this theme we would welcome projects looking at, for example:

• Peer assistant learning, peer-teaching, peer-marking
• Engaging with diverse student groups
• Partnership projects that directly arise from student feedback
• Projects or structures that enable the student voice to drive positive changes
• Building/scaffolding belonging or cohort building

Priority 4. Assessment and Feedback

Under this theme we would welcome projects looking at, for example:

• Effective mechanisms for timely feedback and feedforward
• Student-informed approaches for feedback
• Robust online assessments that reduce academic malpractice
• Authentic assessments that build employability skills

Information sessions and next steps for applications

We ran an online ITL Fellowship Information Session three times across December 2022 and January 2023 at which colleagues can find out more about what ITL Fellowships involve, what we're looking for in projects this year and hear advice on developing your application. We're keen that all colleagues be able to access this information for reference or if unable to attend a session, so after all sessions have taken place you will also be able to view the slides, along with answers to all session FAQs. Some of these are already listed below, and answers to any new queries will be added here after all sessions have taken place.

Applications will be in the form of:

1. An Expression of Interest form (max 2-3 pages), and
2. A focused CV (max 2 pages)

This ITL Fellowship Checklist has been created to help staff with the application process.

If you have further questions around ITL Fellowships, you can contact the Institute team on teaching.learning@manchester.ac.uk.

ITL Fellowships and application process - FAQs

If you have further queries on the Fellowships or application process, please contact the ITL team at teaching.learning@manchester.ac.uk.