News and blog

Today, TASO Evaluation Officer Nicholette Pollard-Odle writes about International Women’s Day 2024 and Endometriosis Action Month 2024

Birmingham City University (BCU) is a large and diverse university with a focus on practice-based learning. At BCU, we are dedicated to developing widening participation interventions that have meaningful impact on the lives of our students and we jumped at the opportunity to be a part of the ethnicity degree awarding gap project with TASO.

The Office for Students has emphasised the importance of a whole-provider strategic approach to delivering and robustly evaluating widening access and participation initiatives. Dr Emma Thompson, Head of Enhancement at the University of Southampton, discusses some of the challenges and the university’s approach to cross-team working in tackling the ethnicity degree awarding gap, working alongside TASO as part of its Theory of Change project.

Today, TASO publishes a report presenting the perspectives of those involved in the delivery and evaluation of student mental health interventions in the UK. 

Dr Katie Jones and Hannah Thomson from The Brilliant Club share insights from the TASO-commissioned consultation on the barriers and enablers to evaluating the causal impact of higher education access and success interventions.

Today TASO has published a new report looking into how learning analytics can identify students at risk of withdrawing from their studies, and prompt appropriate interventions to help with re-engagement.

Help us understand the implications of publishing Access and Participation Plan (APP) evaluations by taking part in a short survey. 

TASO is co-funding ‘ADR England Research Community Catalyst for Youth Transitions’ which aims to map the data sources, identify potential avenues for better data linking and create a community of data users to answer important research questions.

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) is one of six universities participating in TASO’s Theory of Change project which seeks to support the development and evaluation of interventions that aim to close the ethnicity degree awarding gap. As the project draws to a close, Dr Iwi Ugiagbe-Green reflects on the experience and the importance of embedding evaluation.

The University of York wants to ensure that efforts to close the ethnicity degree awarding gap are central to ‘business as usual’ in departments. As part of TASO’s Theory of Change project, the project team at the University of York is seeking to integrate ethnicity degree awarding gap considerations into its annual departmental action planning and reporting cycle. The team reflect on their experience.

TASO is working with Ipsos and three higher education providers to provide robust evidence on student mental health and wellbeing interventions.

Chido Chipato, Student Success and Inclusion Coordinator at the University of Southampton, discusses the University of Southampton’s Awarding Gap Project and how culture, community, and curricula (‘the three Cs’) are central to the project’s development.