Report
18 May 2023
Summary
Multi-intervention outreach programmes are commonly delivered by higher education providers with the aim of widening participation. These programmes combine two or more different activities over a period of months or years, supporting students of different ages.
Mentoring is often delivered as part of a multi-intervention approach and normally involves a sustained programme of engagement between a more experienced mentor (for example, an undergraduate) and a less experienced mentee (for example, a secondary school student). The mentor uses their experience to provide general guidance and support to the mentee.
Mentoring can be difficult to evaluate as elements such as mode of delivery, type of mentor, duration and desired outcomes can differ greatly across programmes.
TASO has worked with higher education providers to seek to produce causal evidence on the impact of multi-intervention outreach programmes. As part of this project, TASO chose to place a specific focus on mentoring to understand how it is conceptualised by different providers, how engagement can be measured, and how it can be evaluated.
This report outlines exploratory analysis conducted on mentoring programmes delivered at Aston University and King’s College London. Both providers use Brightside online mentoring delivered by current undergraduate students to school and college students over the age of 16.
The project explored:
- Commonalities and differences between the two mentoring programmes.
- How best to measure engagement with online mentoring programmes.
- How the volume and content of mentoring messages differed over the course of the programmes.
This report sets out the key findings from the analysis and recommendations for evaluating online mentoring programmes.