Incubator Discovery Grants

Incubator Discovery Grants

Incubator Discovery Grants

Incubator Discovery Grants

Incubator Discovery Grants are funds of up to £300 for educators at the University of Exeter who want to understand a teaching and learning challenge and test possible solutions within their faculty. We will award up to five Incubator Discovery Grants in each faculty. Awards will be made in conjunction with Faculty Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor Education.

An Incubator Discovery Grant enables educators to gather a diverse group of people to explore an educational challenge together using Design Thinking tools. The Incubator Discovery Grant must be used to complete two of three possible Design thinking templates: Empathy Map, Systems Map, or Prototype Evaluation. These templates are tried, and tested tools used widely in Design Thinking to explore problems and gather diverse experiences.

Grant activities can include:

• building a team who would like to explore the challenge,
• hosting discussions, using the Design Thinking templates, between students, academics, or professional service colleagues, and/or people connected to the university,
• paying for catering, off campus room hire, and/or vouchers given to students' or those not employed by the university in recognition of their participation and time.

These three Design Thinking templates are tools that will support educators to plan activities and explore the identified pedagogical problem.

Empathy Map 

Empathy Maps are used to build an understanding of ‘user’ needs at the definition stage of a project. It is likely that in our context the ‘users’ are students, but they also may be colleagues. The map enables us to empathise with the feelings, behaviours, and needs of the people whose experiences we want to improve. 

As a workshop activity, creating an Empathy Map means bringing together one or more groups of people - academics, students, professional staff, senior managers - to explore and set out motivations and needs.

Systems Map 

‌A systems map is a visualisation tool to help identify the component parts and their interactions in the complex system in which your ‘problem’ occurs. As you work within the system it is likely you have a really clear understanding from your own perspective. It is important to gather people together with diverse perspectives in order to gain a fuller representation of the system.

This is an exploratory and research activity that can be delivered as a workshop that will help visualise the patterns in the system, the relationships, and perspectives of the people you are innovating for, and to see the gaps and areas for growth and change to potentially re-design the system. 

Proto-Typing Evaluation‌

Testing one or more potential ideas as a prototype enables you to get quick feedback from users before deciding on a final solution. We are used to thinking of prototypes as low resolution things but they can also be storyboards or role plays - or indeed any method for enabling your users to understand how you think an idea would work in practice. They can then give feedback.

The output of the Incubator Discovery Grant will be completed templates and a short reflection on them to be submitted to the Education Incubator and the respective faculty’s Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor Education.