Researchers have welcomed new resources to help universities make better use of data when evaluating student support initiatives
Working on this project has shone a light on the potential and challenges to using data, and we hope the outputs benefit the sector in understanding how we could use it to effect change and support equality of opportunity for our students.
The team from Staffordshire Centre of Learning and Pedagogic Practice (SCoLPP) at University of Staffordshire were appointed by TASO – an independent hub dedicated to improving equality across the HE sector – as independent evaluator for a project which looks at how institutions can use data to improve student success and reduce equality gaps.
TASO also appointed the University of East Anglia, the University of Huddersfield, Lancaster University and Nottingham Trent University as partners in its institutional data use project.
SCoLPP researchers then looked at the data captured by the partners as part of their student success initiatives such as student demographics, class attendance, interaction with virtual learning environments and attainment. They then considered how that was being used to evaluate success.
Dr Sally Andrews, who lead on the project for SCoLPP, said: “We all want our universities to be the best places for our students to thrive, and institutional data has the potential to influence and guide this. Working on this project has shone a light on the potential and challenges to using data, and we hope the outputs benefit the sector in understanding how we could use it to effect change and support equality of opportunity for our students.”
Working with the four universities and SCoLPP, TASO has produced a set of resources that will help higher education providers harness the power of institutional data when evaluating student support initiatives.
Standardised coding of data and institutional tracking of the use of support services will facilitate better evaluation and enable the most effective approaches to working with students facing barriers to success in higher education to be adopted.
This week TASO has launched:
- Report: Facilitating analysis of institutional data: practical steps for providers (PDF)
- Data infrastructure guide (GitHub interactive resource). A guide to using and developing a data infrastructure to enable effective use of institutional data to evaluate student success activities.
- Post-entry Mapping Outcomes and Activities Tool (MOAT) of student success activities. This framework enables the consistent recording of student engagement with post-entry interventions.
As part of the project SCoLPP has developed an Enhanced Theory of Change for each provider’s chosen student success activities. This project aims to contribute to the evidence base and support the sector in carrying out comprehensive evaluations of their initiatives.