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You’ve done some good thinking through on this. It’s tricky stuff.
I think in the real world there would be a number of variables that would impact on exactly what is considered a cost. These are variables that are hard to pin down in a hypothetical. So let me give you an example.
I’m currently leading a faculty funded teaching and learning research project. My time is included in the budget for the project, but it is considered to be ‘in workload’, so we don’t get extra money to pay for it. It’s simply 20% of my time. The same is true for the other two academics on the project, who are each contributing 10% of their time. The staffing cost that actually costs us real cash is hiring research assistants to do the data collection and other pieces of work like transcribing interview recordings. So in the budget, we had two cost columns: one for in kind contribution (the $ amount that the % of our time costs) and one for the cash we were asking for to cover all the non in kind costs (primarily hiring research assistants). In your case, if you wanted to follow this kind of model, you could note % in kind contributions in the budget rationale/explanation free text field under the table, and just include the actual cold hard cash you’re asking for in the table itself (ie from what you’re saying, I think the only staffing that wouldn’t be covered by current staff would be the project manager, so that’s what I would expect to see in the table).
But having said all that… It is complex with a hypothetical so as long as you clearly explain what money you are asking for and what it will cover, we’ll be happy with that.
And I’m sorry for the slow reply. No matter how many times I whitelist the email address for the forum notifications, they end up in my spam. Gah! Feel free to ping me on Twitter if I don’t reply quickly.
Hi Ruth
It’s difficult to say with out knowing more about your project and what the staff would be doing.
Typically you would cost staffing that is in place specifically for the project – e.g. a project officer or manager, but you may not include time for staff in the branch library to run a program.
Can you please provide some more context about your project including what you anticipate staff will be doing, and who those staff are? (i.e. regular staffing or additional.)
K
Hi Nat
Those questions are prompts for things you should think about and address in Assignment 3. We’re not looking for you to send us a reply to the questions, rather, Clare is suggesting that you should proactively address this in the grant app.
And yup, that’s the idea with the evaluation plan.
K.
Hi Nat
You have picked up an error here. I meant to take the word limits off the project timeline and the risk section – and indeed, I did take them off the form, just not off the site.
To be clear: none of the tables have word limits.
Your project timeline goes into the table – that’s how you typically present a timeline in a proposal or grant. (I think the word limit probably caused the confusion here.)
Your risk section is written up in the table. (Again I think this was my bad with the word limit causing confusion.)
Marketing will probably come up in a number of places including budget, timeline and risk management, as Stacey indicated, and you might like to include a sentence in the overview (but don’t use up too many words on marketing).
Again, as Stacey said, you would indicate your service is intended to be ongoing in your overview but keep in mind that grant funding is one off, so you should think of what you’re doing as a start up project or pilot project. If it’s ongoing, you probably should indicate how it will be funded in the future.
For the evaluation section, you need to tell us how you will evaluate if the project is a success. So you’re not completing the evaluation, but creating a plan for the evaluation.
Use references where they strengthen your argument or you use someone else’s ideas or words. (I don’t expect references in the very practical sections like budget, risks, timeline).
I didn’t mark A2 so you’ll need to include the questions here for me to respond.
K
Hi Caitlin
There was a task at the beginning of the semester that asked students to tweet me so I could follow them and add them to the class list. The people who completed this task are the people I’m following. There’s no hidden agenda here. It’s just whether or not the task was completed.
If you are signed up for the learning analytics research project, I’ll be using that to check your contributions across the semester for marking. If you aren’t, I go through the site and the unit hashtag feed to work out what contribution you have made across the semester.
All contributions in all forums – comments on the teaching team blog posts, comments on your peers’ forum posts, tweets with the unit hashtag – count for participation.
On the Assignment 1 page, I indicated that you need to make at least two contributions a week to pass this part of the assignment.
And yes, the activities for Checkpoint 1 have been marked already and there is no point making any changes to those.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
K
Good! I like it!
Just remember that an aim is usually something quite broad, almost visionary, while objectives are narrower and should be actionable.
I’m pretty sure I put a note on the Seek 10 page to say it would be up after class. It should go up today, but I have lots of meetings so it might be tonight.
Yup, it’s restrictive by design. This is very common on grant application forms, so I want you to have an authetic experience of working with a restrictive form.
I will be going though how to fill out the form in class tonight.
Don’t panic! The form isn’t important. It’s the content that matters. You’ve still got a whole week to get the content into the form.
Ah Caitlin, I’m sorry! I just made a typo in my reply. Your idea *is* on track. It’s a great idea. I didn’t think you’d copied – this is a hot topic right now and it makes sense that people would be coming up with ideas in this space. Please go forward with it!
