Global Challenges Teaching Award

There are three Global Challenge Teaching Awards for pandemics, racial justice and climate change. For each award we will select two awardees, one from the United States and one from the United Kingdom. You can only apply for one award. 

Yes, you can apply with a co-taught or team-taught course. You will need to nominate a primary applicant whose name is on the application and who will be the primary contact, but you can reference the fact that it is a co-taught course in the application and it I possible to use the honorarium to allow a second-staff member to visit the other campus. 

Yes, we will offer the award again next year. Precise awards and the competition timeline will be confirmed by the autumn of 2022. 

The award benefits include a $2500/£2000 technical support fee for the awardee’s higher education institution. This will be payable on completion of the training and is intended to cover any costs incurred by the institution through their participation in the programme. It is entirely up to the institution how they use this money. 

Yes, any faculty teaching an accredited course at a UK or US higher education institution is welcome to apply. It is important that all applicants have the support of their institution for their application and you will need to submit letters of support from your Department and International Office to confirm this. 

No, you can only apply for one award and you can only submit one application. 

No, applying for a Global Challenges Teaching Award does not prevent you from applying for other Fulbright awards in the 2023 application cycle. This award is being run by the US-UK Fulbright Commission independently of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarships Board so applicants are not subject to FFSB approval. Previous Fulbright award recipients are welcome to apply provided they completed their Fulbright award two years ago. 

No, any faculty who teach an accredited course at a higher education institution in either the US or the UK are welcome to apply. Applicants need to have the support of their institution and need to be eligible for either the UK visitor visa (US applicants) or US ESTA (UK applicants). 

The training will take place online during April and May 2022. 

Training in Collaborative Online International Education (COIL) pedagogy is a key part of this award. Both the faculty member (main applicant) and an administrator from their institution take part in the training with their equivalents from the other side of the Atlantic. The training takes place over the course of 8 weeks. There are some sessions that require scheduled attendance but other activities can be completed asynchronously. The precise number of hours will be agreed between the awardees at the start of training, but as a minimum we expect awardees to commit to 5 hours of training per week. A similar commitment would be required by the administrator. 

Yes, if shortlisted for interview you will need to name an administrator from your institution who will also take part in the award. We will ask the administrator to take part in the interview process and they will also undertake the training and campus visit. The purpose of this involvement is to build more long-lasting connections between the two institutions. If you are unsure who would be best to work with you on this project please get in touch. 

The campus visits will be scheduled to suit the timetables of the two institutions. We anticipate them lasting for 1-2 weeks, but there is flexibility to come up with a timetable to suit both parties. The primary aim of the visit is to give the awardees a better understanding of the other institution, get to know their collaborator and lay the platform for a long-term relationship between the two institutions. That said, the campus visit is optional and awardees who would prefer to conduct a fully virtual exchange are welcome to do so. 

The award consists of three financial benefits. (1) An honorarium of $5000/£3750 for the awardee (faculty member). This can be spent however faculty see fit and can be used to support Teaching Assistant travel. The honorarium will be paid out in two payments, the first at the start of the training, the second on completion of the training. (2) A technical support fee of $2500/£2000 for the awardee’s higher education institution. This will be payable on completion of the training. (3) Travel for the awardee and a member of administrative staff to the US/UK to visit their partner institution, up to a value of $5600/£4000. This final benefit will be administered by the US-UK Fulbright Commission.  

Yes, the course should be a credit-bearing at your institution. Students who take the class will continue to receive the same credits for the course as they would have done in previous years. The virtual exchange elements of the course will take place in addition to the standard course as you have taught it before. 

The course needs to address the global challenge directly, but this does not mean that every class needs to be specifically related to the topic. For the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) pedagogy to work we need at least 5-8 weeks worth of material that addresses the subject, so as a minimum there needs to be 5 weeks of worth that speaks directly to the chosen topic. In addition, the learning outcomes for the course should be directly related to pandemics/racial justice/climate change. 

Successful applicants will be paired with a course from the US/UK that also covers the general topic of the award (pandemics, racial justice, climate change). We won’t know exactly which courses are paired until we have completed the selection process, but you can expect to be paired with a course with a slightly different focus or possibly even from a different discipline. The COIL pedagogy is designed to work across disciplines and the training programme takes you through the process of building a virtual exchange component between the two courses. You do not, then, need to pre-emptively outline adaptations to your course in your application. The application should focus more on the importance of the course you currently teach and the benefits to your course, your students and your institution of participating in the virtual exchange programme. 

No, you can only apply with a course that you have taught previously. The virtual exchange course is an enhancement of an existing course and so it is crucial that you have previous experience teaching the material to students before you bring it for a virtual exchange. As mentioned above, it is also crucial that the course has already been approved for teaching in the 2022-2023 academic year. We know that many faculty adapt their courses year on year. This is absolutely fine, but you must have taught a version of the course previously. 

No, we are not looking for specific disciplines. All we are looking for are courses that speak to the three award topic of pandemics, racial justice and climate change. Provided your course engages with these subjects then you are welcome to apply. The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) pedagogy works well with inter-disciplinary collaborations and we would encourage applicants from any discipline. 

The course should be for undergraduate students of any level. It needs to be at least eight weeks in length and at least 5 of those weeks need to cover material directly related to the chosen topic. There is no requirement for the number of teaching hours and the number of hours spent on the virtual exchange will be agreed between faculty members as part of the training. It is also not anticipated that all the taught hours of the current course will translate into live virtual sessions. We expect the course to be taught largely as it is with additional collaborative sessions for the two groups of students. 

You can apply with any course that will be taught in the 2022-2023 academic year. The course should be scheduled for teaching in either the fall/autumn or the spring. Where courses are paired across semesters/terms we anticipate that there will be some virtual exchange activities in the other semester. i.e. a fall/autumn taught course might include virtual exchange activities in the spring and vice versa. 

No, you apply as an individual applicant with the support of your home institution. We will select awardees and introduce them to their equivalents on the other side of the Atlantic. If you have an existing collaborator in the US/UK we would encourage both parties to apply separately, but each applicant should be open to working with whoever they are paired with through the process. 

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) pedagogy was developed by the state University of New York to allow students around the world to participate in virtual exchange programmes across different disciplines and languages. It works by identifying aspects of each course that speak to one another and developing collaborative activities and projects for the students to work on at the intersection of the two courses. In this way it embeds intercultural exchange into an existing class, bringing the benefits of international education to an undergraduate course. You can find out more about how COIL works here: https://online.suny.edu/introtocoil/suny-coil-what-is/ 

No, you will teach the course in much the same way as you have previously. The virtual exchange is an enhancement of your current course and the activities and projects the students collaborate on will be in addition to their regular classes. How and in what areas the two courses intersect will be established during the training process. You will not be trying to combine or re-work two courses into one, but rather building on the connections that you establish between the two courses. 

Yes, applicants with previous experience of COIL are welcome to apply. We will not give preference to previous COIL experience and our assessment will instead focus on applicants ability to collaborate and cooperate in whatever contexts they have been able to do so. 

No, you can only apply with one course. We would suggest you think about which course speaks most strongly to the chosen award and where the learning outcomes are most directly related to the award subject. 

No, as you do not yet know who each course will be paired with your application does not need to pre-emptively outline collaborative activities. Instead we will ask you to answer some short-answer questions on the course you have taught previously and what the benefits would be for you, the course, your students and institution of taking part in a virtual exchange course. 

The letter from the international office needs to outline your institutions priorities around internationalisation. It also needs to demonstrate support for the hosting a virtual exchange course and commit a member of the institutions’ administrative staff to undertaking the training programme alongside the faculty member. The letter does not need to name the administrator at the point of application, but if you are shortlisted for interview we will ask the administrator to take part in some of the interview process. The letter does not necessarily need to come from the International Office and it may be that there is another person at your institution who is better placed to confirm support for the application. If you have any questions about who you should be asking for this letter of support please get in touch. 

The letter of support from the department head needs to outline the benefits of the virtual exchange course to the department. It also needs to demonstrate the department’s support for hosting a virtual exchange and commit to offering the course as an accredited course choice to undergraduates in the 2022-2023 academic year. There may be more than one person in your department who can make these commitments. If so, the letter can come from either of them. If you have any questions about who you should be asking for this letter of support please get in touch. 

The third letter of support should be from someone outside your institution. It could be a former academic colleague, a collaborator, a previous employer or colleague or professional contact. The letter is closer to a standard reference letter and should comment on your general suitability for the award. They might like to mention your academic expertise, your teaching proficiency, your ability to collaborate and your conviction for your subject. 

No, you do not need a letter of support from your instructional design department. You may find it useful to reach out to them to discuss your application as you may need their support to deliver programme. 

The letters of support need to be submitted by your referees directly to our application portal. When you log in you will be able to request the right people to submit the letters directly. If your referees have any issues uploading their letters please get in touch. 

The deadline for written applications and all letters of support is 5pm GMT/12pm EST on Monday 13th December. Applications not submitted by this deadline will not be considered. If you have any technical difficulties in submitting your application please get in touch. 

At the end of the application we allow applicants to upload a sample of their teaching. This can be either a recorded lecture/seminar or lecture/class notes. This is designed to give our review panel more information about what you are like as a teacher. Please note that the materials you upload do not need to be related to the course you are submitting, so if you have a recorded class from another course you teach you are welcome to submit that. 

No, as this is the first year we have run this award we do not have any example applications. The best way to get a sense of what the application requires is to set up a profile and start an application in the portal. You can save and come back to the application at any time so you do not need to complete and submit the application in one go. If you have specific questions as you go through the process of applying please get in touch.