We invite you to submit a nomination for the Innovation Award for our 6th Annual Excellence in Online Learning Conference.

Summary

This award is to celebrate Dr. De La Rosa’s love of education and lasting contribution to online learning, leadership, and gamification and to remember his research that focused on the perception, interaction, and personality of online students. This award recognizes innovative practices that serve as a model for online teaching and learning. The recipient must have designed and applied this innovative approach for at least two semesters in an online course. In addition to implementing the strategy, the recipient will provide evidence of improvements attributable to the method in the form of overall increases in effectiveness, efficiency, and student achievement. The new approach should inspire innovation, support implementation, improve outcomes, and enable accessibility. There will be one award in this category –and includes a $1,000 stipend.

You will be asked to attach documents to this survey (Have ready before proceeding):

• Two letters of recommendation (one from a student and one from an administrator)
• Evidence of achieving expected learning outcomes

Criteria

• Inspire Innovation: Novel integration of instructional strategies that inspire innovation have overcome or removed emerging instructional challenges that make adopting change models or academic transformation difficult. In effect, the novel approach has “broke the mold” and will serve as a model for other instructors.
• Support implementation: Innovative approach can be generalized and replicated by another faculty. In this section, the faculty will provide information for others to apply the new approach in their courses.
• Improve outcomes: Rationale to explain the impact on deeper learning. This is followed by evidence that an innovative approach demonstrates effectiveness, by the details of impact, for example, student success measures, student sample work, attrition, and achievement data if applicable.
• Enable accessibility: The innovative approach is consciously designed to meet accessibility standards, inclusive design for all learners by incorporating Universal Design for Learning guidelines, and Accessibility standards.

Rubric

The following rubric will be used to evaluate submitted proposals: Innovation Evaluation Rubric.

Note

1. Nominations and all submitted materials are confidential. Self-nominations are accepted.
2. To be considered, submit a completely filled-out application.
3. If you have any questions concerning awards for Excellence in Hybrid Teaching, please contact us or call (956) 882-6792 [Brownsville] / (956) 665-5327 [Edinburg].
4. You will be required to submit, at minimum, two letters of recommendation (one from a student and one from an administrator/colleague)
5. The deadline to submit initial nominations for the Innovation Award is Sunday, March 5, 2023 by 11:59 p.m.