A Three-Year Grant Made Possible by The Davis Foundation
We are delighted to announce Designing Forward, a three year grant at Plymouth State University funded by the Davis Foundation to investigate the intersection of instructional design and cluster learning.
The first year of grant activity (“Season One”) will kick off at the Spring Pedagogy Institute (SPIN) on May 20-21st and run through April of 2026.
Season One Activity
The activity of year one will incorporate the Design Forward (DF) curriculum, the CoLab’s holistic faculty development program that supports a community-based exploration of the intentional design of teaching and learning. Over the summer, faculty will complete DF modules that encourage them to develop their thinking and capacity around both innovative pedagogical approaches (in particular Cluster Learning) and design practices that align with these pedagogies and the values that underpin them. In particular, participants will grapple with how to design for learning that is emergent, flexible, interdisciplinary, and open — qualities that often make teaching and learning harder to plan (and thus design) for.
Over the course of the year, participants will also meet several times to continue conversations started in the summer and further consider how to incorporate what they’ve learned into their own teaching. Participants who wish will have an opportunity to continue engaging with the grant in Season Two by proposing specific design projects; applications for these projects will be available in Spring 2026. At that time, there will also be another round of applications for faculty who want to complete the DF curriculum for those who prefer to wait.
Participation in Season One of Designing Forward will involve the following:
- Attending the Spring Pedagogy Institute (SPIN) on May 20-21 (in-person)
- Completing three Design Forward modules between late May and mid-August (online, asynchronous)
- Attending a University Days session in mid-August (in-person, date TBD)
- Attending 4-5 (total) follow-up meetings during Fall 25 and Spring 26 (format and dates TBD)
The Designing Forward grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.
