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Trainer/Facilitator Fund Application

This digital application gives Social Sciences undergraduate course instructors an easy way to apply for the Trainer/Facilitator Fund.

Applications are welcome during the following review periods each year:

  • July 16 to October 15 for Fall and Winter
  • November 16 to February 15 for Winter

About the Trainer/Facilitator Fund:

  1. This funding is intended to help cover the costs of inviting, thanking, or paying trainers/facilitators brought in to help meet the strategic goal of providing students with more opportunities to engage in hands-on learning or applied skill development. This has been identified as a high-priority goal by undergraduate students across the Faculty of Social Sciences.
     
  2. Experiences costing over $300 will typically require coordinated funding from the academic department, where possible.
     
  3. This fund may be used in-course by instructors of social sciences undergraduate courses or by departmental leaders for undergraduate courses in their department/unit.
     
  4. Successful Trainer/Facilitator Fund applications will clearly address at least one of the following eligibility categories:
     
    • 'Hands-on' learning - experiences providing opportunities to practice or learn practical techniques, tools and application
    • Applied skill development - practical experiences fostering transferable skills beyond core academic skills
       
  5. To be eligible, students must actively participate in 'doing' or 'practicing' something during the session versus simply 'learning about' something.

    To receive funding, the experience plan must include the following:
    a) a planned experience where students learn by doing
    b) a plan for the experience to take place during the regularly scheduled class time
    c) a plan for the experience to be a 'required' component of the course
    d) a plan to collect a written reflection from the students on the experience
     
  6. Payments, honoraria, and/or other expenditures associated with this fund will follow the Careers & Experiential Guide to Payments developed in partnership with the Social Sciences Finance team.

Questions can be directed to Ruthanne Talbot on the Careers & EE team at talbotr@mcmaster.ca.

There are 10 questions in this survey.
Applicant Details
Please enter the following applicant details:
Which of the following best describes you?

Please note: the Trainer-Facilitator Fund is aimed at supporting experiences in undergraduate courses. Graduate courses are not currently eligible, nor are extracurricular activities or events.

Based on your response above, please consider checking the Careers & EE website for eligibility details before continuing your application.

Course Details
Please enter the following details about the course:
Experience Details

During the experience facilitated by the trainer/facilitator, what will students do?

Please note: You have indicated that you intend to plan an activity where students will listen to the guest speaker's presentation, and will have the opportunity to ask questions, contribute to a group-wide discussion, etc.

This alone does not meet the eligibility criteria for funding. The Trainer-Faciliator fund is intended to support experiences with high levels of 'hands-on' or applied activity, and does not currently cover experiences where students listen to a presentation or lecture and then make comments or ask questions.

Please consult the eligibility information on the Careers & Experiential Education teaching page for details.

More specifically:

  • How will the students actively participate in "doing" or "practicing" something during the session versus simply "learning about" something?
  • What do you expect the trainer/facilitator will be doing to support student learning before, during, and/or after the experience?

(Please provide a brief summary of approximately 5-7 sentences.)

To receive funding, the experience plan must include the following:

  1. A planned experience where students learn by doing;
  2. A plan for the experience to take place during the regularly scheduled class time;
  3. A plan for the experience to be a ‘required’ component of the course;
  4. A plan to collect a written reflection from the students on the experience;

Please note that the requirement for an experience to be ‘required’ can be satisfied by having the experience incorporated into the normal course proceedings of a course where attendance and participation already have strong expectations or grade components. In classes where attendance and participation is not treated as mandatory, a viable strategy for fulfilling this criterion might be emphasizing or requiring the reflection and linking completion of the reflection to the necessity of attending that particular session.

Formal written reflection has long been central to the pedagogy and best practices of experiential learning. McMaster’s frameworks for experiential learning, informed by Ontario’s SMA3 and SMA4 reporting guidelines, also give priority to course elements framed as ‘required’. Experiences presented as incidental or optional, or scheduled outside of class time, can also set up barriers to student participation. These considerations are increasingly informing the funding decisions of the Careers & Experiential Education team’s teaching support funding.

Please check the boxes below to indicate that you agree with the following statements. Feel free to add comments.

What do you want to pay for using the Trainer/Facilitator Fund?

(Elaborate briefly in the space provided.)

If the total amount of funds required is over $300, are you also seeking financial support from other sources? Please describe.

 
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