Grassroots Regular

Grassroots Regular offers:

• Budget: Depending on the project proposal, you will receive around €2,000 per project.
• Substantive and procedural support during your project.
• Didactic support for knowledge sharing and adoption after completion of your project.

Are you curious about previous projects? With themes such as AI, internationalization, and flexible education?

View the archive

Criteria

Your idea must meet several criteria:

• Your idea focuses on improving education through an ICT application.
• Your idea may be entirely new or build on an existing application, but it must not be a repetition of a previous project. Therefore, we ask you to review current and previous Grassroots projects. If you’re still unsure whether your idea is too similar, please email Sjoukje at grassroots@uva.nl.
• You are willing to explore literature on similar cases.
• You must formulate a learning objective that contributes to your students’ learning process.
• If you are applying as a student, a lecturer must be associated with your Grassroots project.
• Will personal data be processed in your Grassroots project? Privacy and the correct processing of this personal data will be taken into account.

Procedure

• The Grassroots grant can be applied for annually. The next application round opens on Monday, December 1, 2025.
• The application deadline is Friday, 30 January, 2026.
• The results will be announced in mid-March.
• If you are awarded a grant, you are expected to attend the Innovation Festival on Thursday 2 April, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m where both new and existing grant holders pitch their plans or results to each other.
• You will receive substantive and procedural support throughout your project.
• During your final evaluation, content will be collected for a one-off blog post about your project.

Did you know that in addition to the Grassroots grant, there’s also Grassroots+? This grant is for lecturers who have previously innovated their teaching with a promising ICT application through an education grant. Are you such a lecturer and do you want to take this innovation to a larger scale within the UvA, so that other lecturers, programs, and/or faculties can benefit? Then the Grassroots+ grant is for you! This grant supports lecturers with a maximum of €9,000 to broaden the application of their innovative ICT projects. Read more about Grassroots+.

• Can I submit a proposal together with others?

Cooperation is encouraged. Grassrooters can learn a lot from each other and we like to see people who are working on the same educational innovation finding each other. This way, not every teacher or programme has to reinvent the wheel – or come up with new ideas separately. That is why we offer the possibility for several teachers to submit a proposal together. The requested budget is linked to the number of courses and/or programmes in which an innovation will be implemented. This way, you have more to spend and efforts can be shared.

• How much work can I expect?

Because a Grassroots project is only a small project, it is important to have a clear goal and a time schedule, and to make sure it is not too ambitious. The smaller and more concrete the Grassroots project is, the higher the chances of success. For individual Grassroots, it is recommended to carry them out within three months.

• How are the proposals evaluated?

Representatives of TLC form a selection committee. This committee evaluates the proposals according to the criteria indicated above.

• How is the Grassroots grant money disbursed?

Participants who have been awarded a Grassroots grant are paid into a ‘wbs’ number of the course/faculty. The costs of the Grassroots project can be claimed on this number. Students can claim the costs incurred on the declaration form ‘staff not in employment’.