The CHARM-ED Funding Call is an initiative that incentivises collaborative educational innovation projects across the alliance. It provides small-scale seed funding for academic and professional staff to collaboratively develop innovative educational activities aligned with CHARM-EU educational principles.
The approach enables institutions and alliances to:
- Stimulate educational experimentation and innovation
- Foster collaboration across institutions, faculties, schools, and disciplines
- Embed educational principles into practice
- Encourage co-teaching and collaborative curriculum development
- Support rapid development of impactful educational activities
- Build communities of practice around educational transformation
While originally designed to support inter-institutional collaboration across the CHARM-EU Alliance, the model can also be adapted within a single institution to encourage interdisciplinary, interfaculty, and cross-school educational innovation and collaboration.
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The CHARM-ED Funding Call was developed as a mechanism to encourage educational innovation across the CHARM-EU Alliance by supporting collaborative, bottom-up educational initiatives led by staff from multiple institutions and disciplines.
A common challenge within universities and university alliances is how to move educational principles and strategic ambitions into practical implementation across diverse institutional contexts. CHARM-ED was designed to support this challenge by enabling staff to experiment with new educational approaches, collaborate across institutional and disciplinary boundaries, and co-create innovative teaching and learning activities.
Rather than focusing exclusively on large-scale programme development, the initiative supports smaller and shorter-term educational innovation activities with the potential for high impact and transferability. This includes activities such as:
- Challenge-based learning workshops
- Co-teaching initiatives
- Hybrid and online learning activities
- Micro-credential development
- Stakeholder-engaged educational design
- Short term educational activities
A central aspect of the approach is the emphasis on collaboration and educational experimentation. Although developed within a European University Alliance context, the CHARM-ED approach is adaptable to a wide range of higher education settings. The model can support collaboration:
- between universities,
- between faculties or schools within a university,
- across disciplinary boundaries,
- between academic and professional staff,
- and with external stakeholders such as industry, NGOs, and public sector organisations.
This flexibility enables institutions to use small-scale educational innovation funding as a mechanism to break down organisational silos, encourage pedagogical experimentation, and stimulate collaborative curriculum development.
SOMETHING FOR YOU TOO? CHECK OUT THESE RESOURCES!
See the results of our CHARM-ED call here.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET SET UP A SMALL SCALE EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION FUND? SEE OUR GUIDES!
Are you considering setting up a small scale educational innovation fund? Here are some actions and who should be involved from our CHARM-EU experience.
| Step | Action | Who should be involved |
| 1 | Define the purpose of the call | Educational leads, institutional/alliance leadership |
| 2 | Decide what types of activities can be funded | Educational developers, programme leads, finance/admin staff |
| 3 | Set eligibility rules | Call organisers, institutional representatives |
| 4 | Create a short application form and budget template | Educational/admin team |
| 5 | Develop clear evaluation criteria aligned with the purpose of the call. | Educational developers, QA staff, review panel |
| 6 | Launch the call and invite proposals | Communications team, institutional contacts |
| 7 | Evaluate and select projects | Interdisciplinary review panel |
| 8 | Support funded teams during implementation | Educational developers, project leads |
| 9 | Collect reports and outputs | Funded teams, call organisers |
| 10 | Share results | Communications team, project teams |
