A different sort of grant

Key points from the data:

• OLT grants are OLT grants. They have their own particular characteristics and requirements. Applicants need to be familiar with the nature of the funding body and its grants programmes.
• Approaching an OLT grant application as if it was, for example, an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant application, can be like 'trying to fit a square peg in a round hole'.

A theme to emerge from the interview data concerned the specific nature of learning and teaching grants offered by the Office for Learning and Teaching and how this needs to be taken into account when thinking about a possible project and developing an application. Interviewees made comparisons between OLT grants and those offered by other funding bodies, particularly the Australian Research Council (ARC) grants and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants, the 'funding mainstays' of many discipline-based academics in Australian higher education.

One distinction made by interviewees was based on an impression that OLT grants were focussed on learning and teaching in an applied sense while ARC and NHMRC grants were, according to Sam (D), for example, about conducting 'research research'. In this, according to Sally (C), there were both opportunities and challenges. Both Sally (C) and Vivien (C) indicated that while having a track record was vital in ARC and NHMRC grants, this has traditionally been less of a feature of OLT grants. Vivien (C) thought that good ideas have been funded by OLT regardless of an applicant's level of experience or track record. However, this did not mean that it was 'money for jam':

Compared to say, NHMRC/ARC where they’re seen in the context of careers and career progression, and you need track records and things like that, OLT have been good in that you could kind of parachute in as a fairly inexperienced person.  I question how likely that is to continue. I hope it does a bit, and you’ll get better changes in teaching if you let new blood in more frequently. But the flip side to that is that people can think that 'I can just parachute in' and not do any homework and you can't. You still need to do your homework and your apprenticeship a little bit.

It should be noted that success in OLT programmes (grants, awards and fellowships) can also be seen in the context of careers and career progression, particularly—but not exclusively—for teaching academics. The recent classification of OLT grant funding as Category 1 research funding may help in this regard. In addition, it is anticipated that success in OLT programmes will be an important element for promotion for staff in teaching academic profiles.

Sally (C) raised and interesting point when she said that her performance as a discipline-based academic was judged on 'hard research outputs' like publications in A or A star journals that arose from ARC-type grants. This currency, while valued by OLT, was not necessarily the measure of success for an OLT project. She said that in her experience, the OLT were 'just as happy with an applied publication'.

The track record in ARC-type grants equated to an 'expert voice' according to Sally (C). She commented, 'In ARC you are recognised as the expert and therefore they're giving you guidance in terms of how you make your application better … write it better. But they assume your content is OK. Whereas with OLT we tend more to attack the content as well as how it's written'. Sally's (C) reflection was driven by her experience with the internal review processes for OLT applications at her university. She commented that the level of commentary and questioning of the project idea and methodology was much greater for her OLT applications than it was for her ARC applications.

It may be the case that the perceived applied nature of grants funded by OLT (and its predecessors) takes some getting used to by staff who are more familiar with ARC and NHMRC grants. For example, Sam (D) observes:    

With the ARCs … we have to get all that help within the faculty, so a professor who has had 100s of ARCs goes through it and we have this vetting process so that kind of intellectual work gets done throughout the faculty … whereas with the OLT ones because they are not 'research research' they are about teaching and learning and impact and those things, I am not sure where I would have got that advice from without the (OLT grants team) … because we don’t do that … I had no idea.  For the OLT grants you need a different type of help that you wouldn’t necessarily get from within the faculty.

It is likely there are at least two issues at play here. The first is about applicants' understandings of the funding body and its aims. The second is about understanding the nature of OLT projects in terms of what they are supposed be, do and achieve. Without these understandings, it could be that some staff who apply for OLT grants are trying to 'fit a square peg into a round hole' by applying their experiences with different funding bodies to OLT grants. A hint of this is portrayed in Sam's thoughts on what he thought was a key difference between ARC-type grants and OLT learning and teaching grants:

OLT projects are not research projects … I get all of that but obviously we are coming at it wanting to do some valuable academic work as well so there is theory smuggled in, there is empirical evidence which we might use in a research way, but that is not what you necessarily put in the forefront when you put your proposal in. It is little things like that that you learn at the time … Both my projects, even the seed one which is not that huge, are both theoretically quite interesting and are leading to things which will be really useful in the future and in a research sense as well as a kind of practical teaching and learning practice as well.

Note that sound theoretical bases are important to demonstrate in OLT grant applications. Note also that empirical evidence is valued in OLT projects when establishing the nature of current practice as well as the efficacy of any learning and teaching interventions and innovations. Again, it is important for applicants to understanding the funding body and its aims and also understand what OLT projects are supposed be, do and achieve.