How can we be confident that our students are graduating with the skills and knowledge that we claim they have? Are we doing enough to prepare our students for a world where AI is woven throughout our professional and personal lives? If you’re keen to explore these key questions in your academic practice, read on!
The First and Further Year Experience (FFYE) community and grants program is designed to support student transition into higher education study and through to their future careers. The program is aligned to the strategic directions for teaching and learning at UTS, including the Student Experience Framework, and focuses attention on the ways in which supporting students on the margins contributes to improvements in the learning of all students.
In 2025, the FFYE grant program will provide funds of up to $5,000 to trial innovative practices that focus on Assessment in the age of GenAI. Generative AI presents both challenges and opportunities in the FFYE context. These include the complex challenges for assessment validation and degree integrity, as well as opportunities for reforming assessment across whole courses, reducing assessment load, improving feedback and developing students’ capabilities and dispositions for a GenAI world.
Applying for a grant
Academics engaged in whole of course design and/or coordination of core subjects are invited to apply. Team applications involving course teams, teaching teams, tutors, demonstrators, students working as co-designers and academic support professionals are encouraged.
Applications must:
- Address at least one of the two questions below, drawn from the UTS response to TEQSA, Mitigating the risks of artificial intelligence and harnessing its potential through assessment reform and course transformation (2024):
- How can we be confident that our students are graduating with the skills and knowledge that we claim they have, i.e. that students have developed these skills and knowledge through the course and the CILOs have been assured?
- How can we prepare our students to engage ethically and critically in a world where GenAI is increasingly integrated into professional and personal life?
- Involve the development, pilot implementation and evaluation of a practice or resource that will be embedded in a core subject or across core subjects and contribute to a whole of course perspective to the student assessment journey across their degree.
- Contribute to an improved student experience of working with assessment designs that include Generative AI.
- Align to the Assessment Principle of Kift’s (2009, 2023) Transition Pedagogy and may also address one or more of the other curriculum principles (Transition, Diversity, Engagement, Design, and Monitoring and Evaluation).
- Show how the practices and/or resources developed in the project are inclusive of the diversity of students and will be consistent with Universal Design for Learning.
The closing date for applications is 5pm, Monday 9 December, 2024.
More information on can be found on the FFYE grants Sharepoint site, including how to apply for a grant, grant requirements and criteria, past grant examples, support and FAQs. Please contact Kathy Egea, FFYE program coordinator (Kathy.Egea@uts.edu.au) for early ideas, connection with others, feedback and review of draft applications.
Join us at the grants information session
We are also running an online information session to go through the FFYE grant SharePoint site and highlight key areas such as requirements, examples of projects, and other key information about the process. Past examples of grants will be explored, and we will hear from previous FFYE grant holders. Register to join the session and find out more!