Overview

Teaching Development Awards are intended to recognise an initiative you’ve trialled and previous effort that you’ve put into improving an aspect of your teaching or courses. Usually, five to six are awarded each year. These awards only require a very short application form and are intended to help foster a culture of teaching experimentation.
The Teaching Development Awards are an excellent stepping stone towards Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards. They are usually due after the University's Change One Thing challenge.

Applications will be reviewed by members of the Faculty Teaching and Learning Quality Committee.

Successful applications will be added to our Faculty Learning and Teaching Hub to inspire others to try out different ideas. Receiving a FoED Teaching Development Award is valuable evidence of teaching excellence that you can include in continuation and promotion applications.

Value of the Award

Each award comes with a $300 prize.

Eligibility

Any member of the Faculty of Engineering and Design that is involved with teaching is eligible to apply. These awards are targeted towards individuals, but team applications are permissible.

Criteria for the Award

The award criteria focus on fostering innovation and experimentation in teaching by recognizing initiatives that address a specific need, solve a problem, or enhance the student learning experience.

Judges prioritize:
• A clear explanation of the need or problem being tackled.
• An innovative, well-planned approach to address the need or problem.
• A thoughtful method for evaluating the outcomes.

The development should have introduced new ideas or approaches, not just for novelty’s sake, but with a clear purpose tied to improving education. While it doesn’t need to align with all aspects of the TeachWell Framework, it should connect to at least one element of it.

Innovation is key. Commonplace practices within the faculty, like adding standard discussion forums, don’t qualify unless applied in a novel way or adapted from an unrelated field into a new context. It isn’t essential for the innovation to be research-based or successful—failure can still offer valuable insights—nor must it be universally transferable, though adaptability to other contexts is a plus.

How to apply

To apply, you will need to complete the application form, providing brief answers to a few questions about your initiative.

The completed application (typically 2-3 pages in length) should then be submitted via the Assignments page of this FoED T&L Hub or here.

The closing date for applications is 24 April 2025. Applications must be submitted by 11.59pm.

Previous Award Recipients