UW–⁠Madison Information Technology
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Data empowered educational practices (DEEP) microgrants

Launched in 2021, the University of Wisconsin–‍Madison’s microgrant program aims to enhance institutional capacity for leveraging teaching and learning data to improve courses and programs. This initiative encourages innovation, exploration, and iteration in educational practices, with a focus on implementing actionable changes in course design, teaching methods, and progression pathways.

Over the program years, we have supported a variety of impactful and important projects.

This year’s microgrant program focuses on a critical question: How does engagement with online course content impact student performance? We’re exploring:

  • Student interaction patterns with online materials
  • The relationship between engagement and assignment outcomes
  • Insights into student preparation for assignments, quizzes, and exams

Projects are structured using an action research framework; participants plan or take actions for course or program improvement based upon what they learn. (This is different than an educational research project that requires IRB review.) This is designed to be an iterative process that starts with a question and results in a course or program change, or a plan for action. Project awardees share back to campus about their project at a year-end campus event.

Action research framework

1. Identify a question to address in a course or program; submit a proposal. 2. Identify potential data sources. 3. Consult with data governance, evaluation, data analysis, pedagogy. 4. Gather, analyze & validate data. 5. Take action or plan for action. 6. Present process/projects.

Text version

  1. Identify a question to address in a course or program; submit a proposal.
  2. Identify potential data sources.
  3. Consult with data governance, evaluation, data analysis, pedagogy.
  4. Gather, analyze & validate data.
  5. Take action or plan for action.
  6. Present process/projects.

Quantitative and qualitative data

The types of data collected or analyzed have been a mix of qualitative and quantitative data, specifically chosen for each project. They have looked at enrollments, performance assessments, engagement in the classroom or LMS, student perceptions and reflections, third-party classroom observations, and peer feedback from group work.

What people say

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2021–2023 testimonials

“Based on my reporting of this research to my department, I’ve been connected with department leadership and our director of corporate relations. This mini-grant has had an immediate, tangible impact on our department’s DEIB efforts. We’ve made 3 years of progress in just 1 semester.”

—Andy Kuemmel (Computer Sciences)
investigated why students were not enrolling in a course designed to meet their needs for academic support and belonging.

“I had a fantastic time meeting and learning from the LACE group (Learning Analytics Center of Excellence). The teaching techniques they shared with me have made a significant difference, and my students have quantifiably enjoyed the new strategies (as seen in the poster).”

—Kaiser Pister (Computer Sciences)
focused his project on understanding question patterns of students in classrooms.

“Our goal was to evaluate current strategies to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment in our 1st-year, team-based engineering course. This microgrant has provided us with valuable resources to analyze current data, and plan new strategies to promote inclusion in the future.”

—Tracy Jane Puccinelli and Sara Hagen (College of Engineering)
collaborated on how to best foster a collaborative and inclusive environment in a 1st-year, team-based course.

“We sought to understand course grade disparities among Doctor of Pharmacy students by disaggregating data and looking at both demographic and learning analytics variables through a regression model. While our selection of variables is discussed, we suggest how others can disaggregate their data to examine similar learning disparities in their settings.”

—Beth Janetski and Casey Gallimore (Pharmacy-Pharmacotherapy)
collaborated to conduct a systematic review of learning disparities in Doctor of Pharmacy courses.

2024 testimonials

I have found my time in the microgrant program to be incredibly beneficial. The program has not only connected me with essential teaching and learning resources across campus, but more importantly has helped to connect me with a community of individuals who care just as much about teaching and learning as I do. This is a program that will offer lasting benefits for instructors and students alike at our University.

— Anonymous

With the support of this program I was able to focus and implement changes to my course that were received positively from my students. Being part of this program allowed me to have focused time to address EDIB in my teaching with the expertise that the DEEP team offered. I had ideas that I was able to flesh out and receive knowledgeable feedback. I continue to be impressed with the support the University offers to improve our teaching. Thank you.

— Anonymous

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have worked with like minded people who were interested in improving teaching and learning around DEIB topics. The support I got throughout the entire process was fantastic and my team was instrumental in designing and implementing my project.

— Anonymous

The DEEP DEIB microgrant gave us all around support in utilizing and connecting with the many resources across campus units to conduct this action research project and made the process so much smoother and easier than if I had taken it on by myself. The community is incredibly supportive and invested, it was helpful to learn from others in the cohort and across disciplines, and I learned many tools and skills through working with the program.

— Anonymous

Impacts & Insights

Each project provides more specifics about their action plan on their posters and in the presentation slides. Several broad categories of impacts are common across the portfolio of microgrant projects.

  • Pedagogical/curriculum changes: instructors describe changes to their course/program materials or teaching strategies. For example, incorporating different active learning activities like pair-share and murkiest point.
  • Expanded or ongoing use of data: some participants have specific plans to iterate on their use of data. For example, one instructor created a chatbot to answer student questions, based on course materials. Others are planning to continue data collection and analysis, after obtaining IRB approval.
  • Increase impacts through ongoing communication: awardees are sharing about their microgrant project work across campus and also at other national and international conferences. (The 2023-2024 cohort presented at LAP24, a global virtual conference on June 19, 2024 sponsored by the Society for Learning Analytics Research ‘SoLAR’).

We’re excited to see how impacts continue to ripple and grow. Grantees are:

  • Thinking about this as ongoing work – not a project with a defined start and end point. Impacts continue as conversations broaden to other colleagues, departments, divisions.
  • Sharing across divisions, which provides new learning strategies and approaches to try locally.
  • Expanding outreach through team teaching – beyond the original course/microgrant project.
  • Sharing and discussing projects with key stakeholders – department chair, curriculum committee, assessment committee, other instructors.

Looking at the numbers:

The program has grown each year, with more projects awarded and students impacted, as well as expanding to other units on campus.

2022 to 2023 2023 to 2024 2024 to 2025
4 projects 5 projects 7 projects
6 awardees 8 awardees 11 awardees
3 schools/colleges 4 schools/colleges 5 schools/colleges
~1530 students initially impacted ~3000 students initially impacted ? students (TBD – fall 2024)

Support for Data-Empowered Educational Practices

The microgrant program builds on the foundation we’ve built and continues to develop our ability to use data from the teaching and learning environment to better serve our learners, instructors, educational professionals, and the institution. It’s an example of a Data Empowered Educational Practice (DEEP), which is a framework for campus groups to collaborate, share data, and explore how we can strategically use data to drive success for the student experience.

This program is successful due to the support, contributions and collaborations across multiple units; it’s a collaboration between the Division of Information Technology, Learning Analytics Center of Excellence and Academic Technology and the Division for Teaching and Learning, Student Learning Assessment and the Center for Teaching, Learning and Mentoring.

The microgrant program is renewed annually, pending funding. If you are interested in learning more about the next grant cycle, please email LearningAnalytics@office365.wisc.edu.

Project Support

Support throughout the academic year includes a stipend, along with consultations to refine and scope questions. Participants need to have questions they can reasonably explore within the timeframe of two semesters, while still enabling them to take meaningful action in their course. Support includes expertise and consulting about data governance, transparency and student privacy, data collection and analysis, pedagogical strategies, evaluation and surveys, and storytelling with data.

Awardees collaborate with peers in the program through regular cohort meetings, where they can learn from each other and connect with individuals in other units across campus. Participants are also invited to participate in optional sessions about data empowered educational practices/learning analytics through the UW–‍Madison Learning Analytics Community of Practice.

The microgrant awardees work closely with the teaching and learning and student record data stewards, to support and align data goals with campus policy. This work has helped to improve our processes and communication about data governance. A high-level overview document of the data governance process was created to provide some background and an overview about data governance, and to make sure project participants are aware of the steps involved. Each project completes a data inventory which is the basis for conversations with data stewards.

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