The Course Team Fund is back for a second year. It is an easy-application fund for Course Directors at ARU, to support the development of your course teams.
Up to £500 is available for each course, and decisions on funding will be made on three dates within the Autumn trimester, to enable instant use of the fund for course-related activities:
| Applications received by: | Will get a decision by: |
| 5pm on Friday 25 October | Friday 1 November |
| 5pm on Friday 15 November |
Friday 22 November |
| 5pm on Friday 22 November |
Friday 29 November |
Applications to the Course Team fund should be made by Course Directors on the short application form, and should meet at least one of the following criteria:
Note that the fund is for the course staff team (including all who teach and support the course), and to support their development, cohesiveness and connection as a team. This is different to the Course Director funding, which is facilitated by your Faculty Deputy Dean for Education, and is focused on direct activities to improve the student experience on the course. Course teams can receive funding from both sources for different activities.
The Course Team fund is a special fund under the Sabbaticals scheme. Course Team projects are not subject to the same requirements as full Sabbaticals, but they may of course generate further ideas that could in the future become a full Sabbatical application.
“We purchased a day away at a Christmas cupcake making and decorating class. Whilst not immediately obvious how this could build our team, it did! We are a small and furiously busy team with a brand new member. An event away from work, which was fun and requiring focus and the development of new skills for everyone was a leveller and enabled easy conversation. It also provided headspace, recognition and celebration for long-standing members of the team. We came away as a new team, with each person feeling seen, valued, re-invigorated and with a box of cupcakes each.”
“Coming together as a team resulted in cohesion and having us all on board for the proposed changes. The paperwork is now being completed for planning a new course approval, and our Course Team funding really supported getting to the stage we are now at.”
“We utilised funds to organise a Course Team Event (postgraduate) at the School of Medicine on 7 March 2024, and it turned out to be a wonderful Course Team Building Day. We had a number of sessions that included sharing best practices, a collaborative workshop on student engagement, a session on Technology Enhanced Learning by a Learning Technologist, a session by Anglia Learning and Teaching, and an open discussion at the end based around strategies for future collaboration and development.”
“We successfully applied for Course Team Fund to support a Curriculum Away Day for our Sports Coaching and Physical Education degree staff team. Staff were really positive about the experience generally. We came away feeling much more cohesive and connected as a staff team in terms of the intended delivery of our course. In particular the opportunity to share and explore personal and professional values, and to agree common values underpinning the course, was powerful in bringing us together in a focused but reflective way.”