eSTEeM Call for Scholarship Project Proposals September 2025

Welcome to the 26th eSTEeM call for scholarship project proposals for OU colleagues. As in previous calls, we are interested in supporting groups and individual scholars, and we would like to receive both:

1. Fully worked-up proposals by groups or individuals, and
2. Expressions of interest from individuals who would like to join others working on particular themes but do not yet have a defined project. We will then match people according to your expressed interest(s) and help you explore and potentially develop a new project.

If you are new to the STEM Faculty and haven’t heard of eSTEeM, or have not previously engaged with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) but are interested in undertaking a SoTL project engaging with the following priority areas, then please talk to your School Scholarship Lead (details below). If you are based outside a school, or are unsure who best to contact, please contact [email protected] in the first instance to arrange a discussion with an eSTEeM Director and we will advise you further.

Priority areas

Below is a list of strategic priority areas that will help you in focusing your project proposal. Please visit 'Projects' for further information about our themes and details of our current and archived projects. 

Across all priority areas, we would encourage project teams to consider how to actively involve students as collaborators/co-investigators within their project teams and to draw upon the experience of colleagues in the Student Support Team. Further details can be found below under ‘Guidance and recommendations.’

• Access, Participation and Success: We continue to seek projects related to Access, Participation and Success which investigate issues around registration, tuition, completion and awarding gaps with respect to Black students, students with mental health challenges and students with the highest level of deprivation.  
• Continuation and completion: To meet the OU’s goal of enabling success for our students, we are actively seeking scholarship projects that investigate and implement strategies to enhance student continuation and completion, such as sense of community/belonging.
• Curriculum design and assessment: We are keen to encourage projects that investigate ways in which we can enhance teaching of sustainability through the STEM curriculum and/or embed sustainability in curriculum design/creation.
• Staff and student community, wellbeing and support: With the increase in awareness of requirements around staff and students mental and physical health, we are looking for projects that foster a supportive and inclusive environment for both staff and students.  We are particularly interested in initiatives that address mental health and wellbeing, enhancing a sense of belonging and strengthening community connections across diverse student and staff populations.
• Technology Enhanced Learning: With the rise of generative artificial intelligence and extended reality, we are interested in exploring the challenges, opportunities and impact of technologies on STEM teaching, learning and assessment.

Selection criteria

Funding for projects will be limited, and the eSTEeM Coordination Group will be considering all projects based on the following criteria:

• How closely the project addresses one or more of the priority areas.
• The range and scope of project (e.g. how many modules/schools within STEM will benefit).
• How it builds upon previous projects from across STEM/the university and other research.
• The breadth and diversity of project team and others involved with the project, including the use of Student Support Team members and involvement of students as partners.
• The potential for impact of the project as based on the criteria within the Impact Evaluation Tracking Tool (IETT).
• The number of ongoing and/or unfinished projects by members of the project team. 

The expected amount of funding for each project will be up to a maximum of £4,000 for the total duration of the project. Funding for external dissemination to UK or international conferences may be requested up to a maximum of £2,000. However, please note that any requests must be made to the eSTEeM Management Team before the submission of an abstract to a conference and is dependent on the remaining budget within eSTEeM for that academic year.

What to do next

Full project proposals 

If you have a worked-up proposal in mind, then please download a project proposal form (link under 'Related Resources' below). To assist you in preparing your proposal, please view our current and archived eSTEeM projects and final reports. Please also visit the Scholarship Exchange, the University’s repository of scholarship projects and reports to explore related scholarship that your proposal could build upon. We would also strongly encourage you to speak to those colleagues who have conducted similar projects to the one you may be proposing.

Expressions of Interest 

If you are not in a position to send in a full proposal but would be interested in joining in a project team that has gained eSTEeM approval for their proposal, please register your interest by sending an email to [email protected] indicating the priority area(s) you are interested in investigating and why. 

Sign off procedure for fully worked-up proposals

Please note that before submission to eSTEeM all project proposals must be reviewed and endorsed by your School Scholarship Lead/eSTEeM Director. Your time allocation must be approved by your Line Manager (Associate Lecturers) and all proposals must be approved by your Head of School or Line Manager, if you are based outside a school. Therefore, please ensure that you contact your respective School Scholarship Lead/eSTEeM Director to discuss your ideas as soon as possible and ideally no later than Friday 26th September 2025. This will allow them sufficient time to support you and provide feedback on your draft proposal before the deadline. Please also make sure that you allow enough time for your Line Manager and Head of School/Line Manager, if you are based outside a school, to sign off the proposal in advance of the deadline. 

If you are an AL, and possibly working across a number of schools, then please contact the Scholarship Lead of the School to which the proposal relates. 

Pre-bidding Workshop and Drop-in Session

We will be holding a pre-bidding workshop to assist colleagues with the preparation of an eSTEeM project proposal and to discuss any project ideas that you may have. We would strongly encourage anyone who is new to submitting a proposal to attend. The workshop will take place on Thursday 11th September, 10.30-12.00 via MS Teams. 

In addition, we will be holding a drop-in session on Tuesday 16th September, 19.00-20.00 via Teams, for those colleagues unable to attend the workshop who wish to discuss their project idea or if you have any further queries. To register for the sessions, please visit the registration page. Registration will close at 17.00 on the 10th September. If you wish to attend either session but have not registered by then, please email [email protected].  

Submission deadline 

The deadline for fully worked-up proposals and expressions of interest is 17.00 Friday 14th November 2025. Please note that late submissions will not be considered within this call. Proposals will be scrutinised by the eSTEeM Coordination Group in late November/early December and proposers will be informed shortly afterwards. 

Project call timetable 

If you are unable to develop a proposal during this round, then we anticipate further calls as detailed below.

Further details

The estimated duration of projects is around 12-18 months with each team member expected to commit a minimum of 10 days for the duration of the project. 

Key information for Associate Lecturers

1. Please note there is a maximum threshold of 1.3 FTE for all OU work. In the first instance, you should ensure that you have capacity for this role within your OU workload FTE. If you are unsure, please contact your AL Services Team to check if you have the capacity to undertake this task. You can check directly via the AL Workload Report tool. Before applying to this Expression of Interest, you will need to firstly contact your line manager to discuss your workload, to establish AL role workload commitments and whether exceptionally undertaking this task from your AL role FTE will leave you with sufficient capacity to undertake any other key, expected AL tasks. If no capacity is available, in exceptional circumstances the Faculty approval process to raise an Additional Duties Contract will be followed.
2. Project time is limited to up to a maximum total of 20 days (over 12–18 months) which may be shared among a number of ALs working on the same project.
3. Scholarship skills development and mentoring will be provided by eSTEeM.
4. Project proposals will require endorsement from your School Scholarship Lead, approval of your time from your Line Manager (for each AL on the project team) and approval from your Head of School.
5. Applying for an eSTEeM project for the first time may feel a little daunting, but please remember there is help and support available. If you have an idea, but not a defined project, and would like to discuss it further in the first instance, then please feel free to contact your School Scholarship Lead (details above), your Line Manager or the eSTEeM Management Team by emailing [email protected].
6. eSTEeM projects often require assistance with a variety of tasks, such as the collection of quantitative and qualitative data, literature reviews or running focus groups with students. Therefore, if you do not wish to lead a project but would be interested in contributing to a project in this way, please complete an AL skills register and return it to us at [email protected]. We will keep your details on file and, when an opportunity arises, we will try to match them to the skills, experience, and areas of interest that you have told us about. 

Guidance and recommendations

Students as Partners in Scholarship 

We continue to encourage projects that actively involve students as collaborators/co-investigators in the project team (and not just as research participants). We are happy to provide guidance on how exactly this might be achieved in the context of your project plan. Please note that students who accumulate eight hours or more of working on an eSTEeM project will be able to claim a digital badge ‘Student Partner in Educational Research’ in recognition of their contributions to scholarship. Please also visit the Students as Partners in Scholarship Framework for more guidance.

Collaboration with Student Recruitment and Support Centre/Student Support Team colleagues

We would also like to further encourage collaborative proposals between the Student Recruitment and Support Centre and the STEM Faculty that will evaluate the impact of activities around student experience and success. We are keen for these to involve Student Recruitment and Support Centre staff as active partners in the design and operation of the project, and not merely in contacting students. eSTEeM has a panel of SST Scholarship Champions who are advisors (Senior Advisors and Educational Advisors) willing to work with colleagues on eSTEeM projects. If you would like to know more about current and planned activities within individual subject areas, please contact your School SST Lead. 

Professional development

If you are seeking to gain recognition as a Fellow or Senior Fellow of Advance HE, a completed eSTEeM project can be helpful to support your claim for professional recognition against the Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education (PSF, 2023) via Applaud.

In addition, eSTEeM has developed a Badged Open Course Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in STEM, which is freely available on OpenLearn. The aim of the course is to guide colleagues through the process of systematically designing, conducting, reflecting upon and evaluating an ethically reasoned SoTL inquiry. This resource is highly recommended for anyone who is new to scholarship and looking to submit a proposal.

If you have any queries, then please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

We look forward to receiving your proposals and expressions of interest by 17.00 on Friday 14th November 2025.