The Teaching Award winners are featured in the annual Loughborough University Learning and Teaching Conference in September 2021.

The Teaching Innovation Awards (TIAs) support innovation which positively impacts students’ academic experience and enhances the teaching quality at Loughborough University.

As new developments appear across both campuses, there may be initiatives you wish to research or implement to support staff or students to advance in terms of teaching environments, uses of technology or approaches to learning.

These can be short projects (1-2 months), medium projects (3-6 months) and long-term projects up to 12 months.

There are four categories in the TIAs:

• Teaching Innovation Award
• Inclusivity in Teaching TIA
• STEMLab TIA
• Student Education Research Placement TIA

The Teaching Innovation Award and Inclusivity in Teaching TIA provide funds up to a maximum of £3,000 per project are available, although this can be increased to £5,000 in exceptional cases.

The STEMLab TIA and Student Education Research Placement TIA offer funds for a Summer Placement Student up to 10 weeks or this can be divided into two students at five weeks.

More information can be found here. The deadline for applications is 3 May 2021.

The Research-informed Teaching Awards (RiTAs) are prestigious annual awards that seek to recognise and celebrate academic staff who have made a sustained and outstanding contribution to the promotion of research-informed teaching that has a direct impact on the student learning experience at Loughborough University.

The awards are designed to foster pedagogic research across the institution and to reaffirm the University’s commitment to recognise staff who demonstrate high levels of achievement in both research and teaching.  

In 2020 four members of staff received RiTAs, the recipients were Dr Lara Alcock, Dr Ash Casey, Dr Clare Hutton, Dr Chris Wilson. Further information on their work can be found here.

Please note applications for RiTAs must also be sent to your Dean of School or their nominee prior to submission for supporting comments. Your application must reach the Centre for Academic Practice by 3 May 2021.

New to this year is the 2020/21 Teaching Best Practice Award. This brand-new award category invites applications from all those who have an example of best practice to share with colleagues across our Learning and Teaching community.

Applications will be considered at a Teaching Awards panel, with the best submissions being selected to feature on the University's Teaching and Learning Best Practice webpages.  From those, the final winners will receive a 2020/21 Teaching Best Practice Award and a monetary prize to be used to enhance their teaching practice.

The deadline for applications is 7 June 2021.

Pro Vice Chancellor (Teaching) Professor Rachel Thomson commented: “This year, more than ever, we would like to celebrate our excellent teaching at Loughborough University and recognise colleagues for their continued efforts to innovate and inspire our students. In addition to the longstanding Teaching Awards (the Teaching Innovation Awards and Research-informed Teaching Awards) we are launching the 2020/21 Teaching Best Practice Award. This new award aims to capture outstanding examples of teaching happening at Loughborough in order to share the ideas across our community and commend those who have delivered on these activities.”

Guidance and application forms appear within the Teaching Awards area of the Centre for Academic Practice website here. If you are interested in applying for either award it is recommended you speak to colleagues in CAP when formulating your application, please contact Samantha Chester or Sarah Bamforth.