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Apply for either £450 or £850 in funding for staff and students to work in partnership on a project to enhance the student learning experience at UCL.
What are ChangeMakers Projects?
UCL ChangeMakers has been running at UCL since 2014. It was set up to support students and staff working in partnership on projects that improve the learning and wider student experience at UCL. Staff and students can apply for funding of £450 or £850 to make improvements in their departments.
“The most rewarding part of this project was to be working in a relatively large group of students and staff. Just knowing that there are so many passionate people who wanted to use their experience to help others was rewarding in itself.”
ChangeMakers project funding is a great resource for taking action on student feedback and ensuring students play an active role in bringing about change. It is also a great way to support student ideas for making improvements to education at UCL.
A partnership approach
ChangeMakers projects are perfect where staff and students want to work together to address a problem, explore an idea or make a change. We call this a 'student-staff partnership' project. It recognises that both staff and students bring different but equally valuable perspectives, ideas, experiences and expertise to a project.
“Student staff partnership was an essential factor in the process and success of this project. Having staff’s professional input at different stages of the project while students on the team were still expected to show a degree of responsibility in making informed decisions was very important. The balance between student-staff partnership helped students receive the guidance they need while still empowering them to make decisions and carry out most of the work.”
Who can submit an application for ChangeMakers funding?
Anyone can submit a proposal (staff or students) although we strongly encourage you to develop and submit your application as a team. Applications coming from students will need a statement of support from a member of staff in their department (or related to their project) to confirm that the department supports the project, that it addresses student priorities and that they will work with those students as their staff partner.
£450 or £850 funding available.
You can apply for either £450 or £850 in ChangeMakers funding. This funding is to pay for student stipends for the project team and for any other project costs. Funding will be transferred to your department if your application is successful and will need to be spent by the 31st July 2023. We will pay out the funding depending on the scope of change you are looking to make as follows:
- £450 projects: These projects will be making a change at module or programme level. Projects at a module level will need to demonstrate how they intend to up-scale the project to programme level in the longer term.
- £850 projects: These projects will need to be making a change at programme or department level, with a view to sharing findings more widely within the faculty or related disciplines.
Project Themes for 2022/23:
These themes are selected to align with current student priorities and were agreed by the Student Engagement Steering Group by its student and staff members.
- Learning Communities & Belonging: Creating connections within programmes;
- Academic development & support: Personal tutoring and peer support;
- Assessment & Feedback: Co-creating authentic assessments;
- Supporting student success: Co-creating inclusive curriculums.
We will prioritise projects across any theme that address mental health and wellbeing support, especially where these are embedding within the curriculum rather than as add-on activity.
