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AIM High Impact Awards

Overview

The UCF AIM High event presents four AIM High Impact Awards: two that recognize an individual faculty member and two that recognize a department or group. These will be divided into the ‘Legacy‘ category, for those who have been using affordable instructional materials for more than two years (before 1/1/24), and the ‘Rising‘ category, for those who have adopted affordable instructional materials for less than two years (after 1/1/24). The winners of these awards are those who have made significant impacts and commendable effort towards providing affordable instructional materials for students. The award guidelines have been created to be inclusive in nature to equally recognize faculty from across the university who teach various levels and class sizes.

Submission Criteria

The following criteria will be considered for the award recipients to determine the impact the individual(s) had on affordable instructional materials at UCF. The submissions will be considered holistically – not based purely on data – to determine overall impact.

Applications and nominations are now open for the 2026 AIM High Awards and will remain open until Friday, November 7.

  • Eligibility Criteria 
    • To be eligible for an AIM High Impact Award, you must have taught at UCF within the past year. [Spring 2025, Summer 2025, and/or Fall 2025] 
    • To be eligible for an AIM High Impact Award, the digital materials used in your course(s) must comply with UCF’s Digital Accessibility Policy.   
    • To be eligible for an AIM High Impact Award, your course materials must meet the Affordability Counts standard of costing no more than $20 per credit hour. For example: 
      • 3-credit course: under $60 
      • 4-credit course: under $80 
      • 5-credit course: under $100 
    • To ensure broad recognition across our community, eligibility for AIM High Awards follows a three-year rotation period:
      • Individual Awards:
        Previous individual winners (both Rising and Legacy categories) are not eligible to receive another individual award until three years after their last win.
      • Group Awards:
        If a group has received an AIM High Award (both Rising and Legacy categories), that same group will not be eligible to win again for three years.
      • Cross-Eligibility:
        A previous individual award recipient may still be part of a group submission in the following year. Likewise, a member of a winning group may submit an individual application the next year.
  • Impact in Using Affordable Instructional Materials 
    • Adoption of free textbooks/content (e.g., library eBook, open textbook, OER) OR affordable by design, e.g., self-created module content, lecture content, and other free or low-cost materials.  
    • Length of time using these affordable instructional materials (legacy award vs rising award)  
    • Number of course sections impacted 
    • Average/Estimate of cost savings 
  • Creativity and Innovation in Using Affordable Instructional Materials 
    • Integration of materials to enhance learning 
      • Creation of free textbooks/content (e.g., library eBook, open textbook, OER)  
      • Received grant(s) that led to purchasing course materials and/or doing redesign to meet AIM objectives     
      • Use of external online tools for course content (e.g., social media, blogs, websites, wikis, apps etc.)    
      • Use of UCF resources (Obojobo, Materia, Pressbooks, Leganto, and other Canvas features)     
    • Level of interactivity 
    • Uniqueness of materials.  
    • Student centric and contextualized materials.  
  • Student Success in Using Affordable Instructional Materials 
    • Student feedback (rich qualitative feedback based on their experience interacting with affordable materials, e.g., SPI data, student survey results, student quotes)  
    • Course materials are designed or enhanced to be accessible beyond meeting UCF’s Digital Accessibility Policy. 
  • Sharing and Collaboration in Using Affordable Instructional Materials 
    • Involvement in case study, research project, presentation, conference proceeding, publication, sharing of content or resources with others (internally and externally), etc. 
    • Specify the extent of how you or your group collaborated with others (i.e. instructional designers, librarians, UCF colleagues, UCF staff, external colleagues)  

Please note:

  • We understand that you may not have all the information for the data-related questions. Please provide the information to the best of your ability or an estimate for these numbers.
  • You can view past Impact Award winners on the AIM website.
  • To support accessibility needs, a Word document version of the Award Application is also available. You may complete and submit it by emailing affordable@ucf.edu.

Next Steps

After you have submitted your individual or group self-nomination, you will receive an automatic notification from Qualtrics. At that time, the review committee will compile all of the submissions until the deadline. A member from the review committee will reach out to you and/or your nominee if there are any follow-up questions.

Applications and nominations are now open for the 2026 AIM High Awards and will remain open until Friday, November 7. For any questions, please contact us at affordable@ucf.edu.