Brightspace Innovation Program announces grant opportunities for West Lafayette, Fort Wayne, Northwest, and Global instructors and staff

Purdue’s Brightspace learning management system team is seeking grant proposals from instructors and staff at West Lafayette, Fort Wayne, Northwest, and Global who want to explore innovative teaching and learning ideas using Brightspace.

The Brightspace Innovation Program helps fund research proposals that leverage Brightspace to promote high-quality instruction, improve outcomes for instructors and students, or foster other new and emerging approaches to teaching. Proposals can span a broad spectrum of innovative teaching and learning projects but should include Brightspace as an integral feature of the project. Proposals might include, but are not limited to, projects that: 

• Focus on the exploration of truly new ideas and concepts;  
• Demonstrate the potential for using Brightspace features and functionality to enhance the learning experience of students;
• Test new Brightspace features to determine how or when they can be most effective;
• Use emerging pedagogies within Brightspace;
• Involve active learning in new learning spaces on campus or in a digital environment;
• Promote online education including digital experiential learning (for example, virtual labs);
• Lead to widespread adoption of existing Brightspace features and functionality;
• Use student data in Brightspace to enhance student success and retention.

The Program has a budget of $25,000 for FY 2024. Grant awards can range from $5,000 to the full $25,000 and be effective for up to two years. Selection criteria include the use of Brightspace, innovation in instruction, measures and analytics to determine and assess outcomes, feasibility and timeline, sustainability, transferability to other courses/units/campuses, and the scope of the potential impact. Special consideration and higher value awards will be given to proposals that contain cross-campus collaboration. 

Project costs can include summer salary support for AY faculty and staff as well as overload support for faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate wages. Funding will not support other faculty and staff salary costs, equipment replacement, online course redesign or remodeling of space.

Proposals are due October 23, 2023. For more information about the program, including how to apply, visit https://www.purdue.edu/brightspace/innovation.php.