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2025 Open Call for Teaching Innovation Incubator Projects

Since 2022, the Teaching Innovation Incubator has been supporting bold teaching and learning ideas. With cross-functional, cross-faculty teams pursuing innovative ideas, its six current "beta" projects—designed to shape the Incubator’s long-term future—are now reaching their final stages.

We are now seeking new projects to join the Incubator! 

Open call specifics

This November, the Teaching Innovation Incubator is excited to announce its inaugural open call for project submissions.

We are seeking diverse project teams with teaching and learning ideas that are complex, necessitate change, require interdisciplinary and cross-functional partnerships, and have the potential to be a transformative part of the future of education at the University of Waterloo.

Selected projects will gain access to funding ($20,000 for project-specific expenses), project coordination support, and a suite of resources. Check out the 2025 Incubator Project Funding and Funding Eligibility below to see what selected Incubator projects can expect upon acceptance into the Incubator.

Submissions are due December 13, 2024, by end of day with decisions to be made in January 2025.

Applicants are encouraged to consult with the Teaching Innovation Incubator (tii@uwaterloo.ca) in advance of submitting a proposal.  An adjudication committee (comprised of faculty, staff, and students) will review all submissions in accordance with the Innovative Project Evaluation Rubric. 

Open call themes

While the Incubator will consider any project with potential for substantial impact on teaching and learning at Waterloo, particular attention will be paid to these themes: 

  • Generative-AI and the future of Teaching and Learning  

  • Projects involving two or more of Waterloo's Global Futures 

We especially encourage submissions that aim to explore technologies or innovations that exist within the EdTech Sandbox (set to be operational in January 2025). These affordances will be at your disposal for the length of your project. 

Incubator projects will be encouraged to address this theme by proposing: 

  • New academic programs 

  • New approaches to teaching 

  • New assessment practices (in the GenAI era) 

  • Innovative use of educational technologies (in the GenAI era) 

  • Societal advances to improve our learning environment 

What is the Teaching Innovation Incubator (TII)?

The TII supports experimentation with bold teaching and learning ideas by bringing together talent, expertise, and - where appropriate - technology to serve as a hub, catalyst, and launch pad for the development of transformative teaching ideas at Waterloo. It provides the opportunity and necessary support to develop, “test drive,” and evaluate ideas that have potential to transform our teaching practices and lead the next generation of teaching and learning at Waterloo. 

Current and previous examples of TII projects can be found on the Teaching Innovation Incubator webpage. 

What makes a TII project?

Teaching Innovation Incubator projects should be bold and innovative initiatives, with potential for transformative impacts that will inspire the future of teaching and learning at the University of Waterloo. 

TII projects are: 

  • Genuinely investigative – they should be formulated with the expectation that there will be genuine learning and evolution as the work unfolds 

  • Interdisciplinary – the best ideas require input from various disciplines to understand how best to tackle these initiatives 

  • Cross-functional – various roles from across UW are required to understand the scope of the project (e.g., students, faculty, and staff) 

  • Large-scale – they are not confined to a single course or learning experience, but rather have a larger impact (program, department, faculty, or institution-wide) 

  • Likely to involve structural change – they anticipate systemic or structural barriers that require innovative approaches to resolve 

Your project idea may not align with all of these characteristics, but it should resonate with most of them.

Application Details: What you need to know

2025 Incubator Project Applicant Eligibility

Applicant Eligibility

  • The project lead (or co-leads) must be full-time, permanent employees of the University of Waterloo. Tenure Stream and Teaching Stream faculty, lab instructors and teaching staff, and academic support staff are all welcome to apply as project leads or co-leads.  
  • Tenure Stream and Teaching Stream faculty, lab instructors
  • Additional project team members have no such restrictions (i.e., they can be undergraduate or graduate students, part-time staff, definite-term lecturers, or external to the University of Waterloo). 
  • Please note that TII projects may count toward educational leadership for teaching stream faculty members under Policy 76/77. 

2025 Incubator Project Funding and Funding Eligibility

Project Funding 

Successful projects which enter the Teaching Innovation Incubator will receive the following: 

  • Up to $20,000 for project-specific resources  (see funding eligibility to the right)

  • TII support, which includes: 

    • dedicated project support by TII co-op students 

    • brokering of connections for ideas, projects, and networking 

    • project ideation support to help think through scope and proposal creation 

    • project management to help plan and keep experimentation work on track 

    • advisory input and resources to support project teams 

    • expertise for regular, iterative evaluation at various phases of incubation 

    • assistance with progressive educational spaces and technologies 

    • ongoing communication and event management 

If you have questions about eligible or ineligible expenses that are not listed here, please contact us at tii@uwaterloo.ca

Funding Eligibility

Project funds can be spent on the following items: 

  • Student remuneration 

  • Honoraria for guests with expertise 

  • Conference travel and accommodation 

  • Educational software or hardware 

Ineligible Expenses

  • Salary for applicant(s) and co-applicant(s) 

  • Hiring of research coordinators or research assistants (the TII provides these as part of its support structure) 

  • Teaching release 

  • Educational technologies or software already available in the EdTech Sandbox 

  • Services already funded at the University of Waterloo 

  • Retroactive expenses incurred before entry into the TII 

2025 Incubator Project Expectations

2025 Incubator Project Expectations

Projects in the Teaching Innovation Incubator are expected to engage with the Teaching Innovation Incubator throughout the duration of the project by working with leadership in the TII and TII co-op students for day-to-day project support, sharing project updates, and participating in events to showcase their work to the broader University of Waterloo community. 

At the end of the first year (December 2025), depending on the length of the project, project teams will be expected to prepare either an interim or final report. Templates will be provided in advance of this deadline.  

2025 Incubator Project Selection Criteria

2025 Incubator Project Selection Criteria

Selection criteria for 2025 Incubator project applications has been broken down into two categories: "must haves" and "other recommended criteria". While projects do not need to fulfill all of the criteria laid out in the "other" category it is highly recommended. 

Must Haves

1. Innovation within Context 

Successful proposals must demonstrate awareness of their project’s context and the extent to which it reflects teaching and learning innovation (e.g., while “new” might mean “new to Waterloo” and need not mean “new anywhere”, the proposal needs to clearly articulate what will be innovative if the project results in changes at the anticipated scale at Waterloo).

2. Scalability and Impact 

Successful proposals must demonstrate potential for broad impact. If a project does not have the potential to have a substantial effect for many students, it should be able to serve as a prototype for similar, scalable approaches that could benefit a wider student population in the future.  

  • Scalability: How many students/programs will be impacted if project proceeds as proposed?   

  • Impact: How much improvement in the teaching and learning experience of each student is anticipated? 

3. Feasibility 

Successful proposals will explain the feasibility of (a) the project, and (b) the possible end-product.  

  • Does the project account for other potential obstacles to overcome (e.g., possible resistance from other stakeholders, need to modify rules or procedures)? 

  • For (b), does the suggested end-product aim to produce changes that can be implemented at scale in times of resource constraint, and would the resulting steady-state be sustainable?  

4. Team Composition 

Successful proposals will comprise a team with relevant expertise to complete the project, considering the right mix of faculty members, relevant professional staff, and, if appropriate, students. 

5. Cross-Functional and Cross-Faculty Collaboration 

Successful proposals will involve cross-Faculty collaboration and generally will include cross-functional teams (e.g., planned involvement of professional staff in ASUs with relevant expertise).  

Other Recommended Criteria

Institutional Priority 

  • If the proposal does not fall within one of the themes of the open call, it should match or be aligned with some other articulated University priority.

Evidence of Existing Research 

  • The proposal should demonstrate awareness of any existing research literature and examples of similar initiatives elsewhere that are relevant to the proposal and appropriately take them into account in their project design.   

2025 Incubator Application Submission

2025 Incubator Application Submission

Complete the TII Project application and submit the application through the open call webform. Your application will address the following: 

  • A clear description of the proposed project and how it addresses the theme of the open call 

  • Key partners and collaborators identified 

  • Project results – the key deliverables or takeaways from doing this project 

  • Additional benefits from project incubation – the benefits for the institution that may result from this project 

  • Proposed timeline with major milestones 

  • Detailed project budget 

Project Consultation and Adjudication

Applicants are encouraged to consult with the Teaching Innovation Incubator (tii@uwaterloo.ca) in advance of submitting a proposal.  An adjudication committee (comprised of faculty, staff, and students) will review all submissions in accordance with the Innovative Project Evaluation Rubric. 

Incubator project decisions will be announced in January 2025.