Evaluation strategy (Bloomsbury Institute Ltd)
Bloomsbury Institute had a robust and well-articulated evaluation strategy. It identified current and future data sources that would be used to evaluate the different targets in its APP, and stated dates by when these would be undertaken. The plan recognised that the impacts of four-year programmes would not be seen for at least four years, and so highlighted ‘less ambitious’ realistic targets for the first three years of the intervention. The APP included the detailed information needed to complete evaluations of programmes and activities. The evaluation strategy refers to specific primary data sources (collected by the provider specifically for the evaluation) including surveys, interviews, learning analytics, and secondary data sources (collected separately from the evaluation data), such as from HESA and the OfS and internal monitoring data (e.g. course feedback). This HEP provides a detailed interim and final evaluation plan, which highlights the need and intention to use the emerging findings to adapt interventions where necessary, including decommissioning (i.e. stopping an activity) where findings suggest inefficacy or detriment to students. The university notes where interim evaluation has already impacted its provision:
Through this evaluation process, for the second year of delivery (2017–18) we redesigned one of the two Semester 1 modules to provide more effective ‘scaffolding’ of learning and assessment. We included a low-stake task in Week 3, followed by progressively longer and more difficult tasks. This was successful and it was then rolled out across other modules in 2018–19.
Bloomsbury Institute Ltd
Bloomsbury Institute identifies who has responsibility for undertaking the evaluations. Throughout its plan, this provider also indicates how the findings will be used and disseminated to a wider audience, both internally and externally, reflecting both a desire to share knowledge and an intention to seek out opportunities.