News18 May 2023
TASO has launched a new report exploring the evidence on the impact of multi-intervention outreach and mentoring programmes and how to evaluate these programmes so we can advance the evidence base and improve practice across the sector.
The project involved a review of the existing evidence and a series of local evaluations, partnering with higher education providers (HEPs) to explore the different ways in which multi-intervention outreach and mentoring programmes could be evaluated. The partners and programmes evaluated were:
- University of Birmingham (Forward Thinking programme)
- King’s College London (K+ widening participation programme)
- Aston University (Pathway to Healthcare programme and Pathway to STEM programme)
King’s College London and Aston University also took part in a collaborative evaluation of online mentoring.
Findings from the project have been used to develop a Mapping Outcomes and Activities Tool (MOAT), which was developed in collaboration with the project partners. The MOAT aims to support the sector in conducting robust and consistent evaluations of multi-intervention programmes, and to improve understanding of how specific elements of multi-intervention outreach and mentoring programmes lead to particular outcomes.
This tool will act as a foundation for TASO’s evaluation of widening participation (WP) activity in our next phase of work.
Key findings and recommendations for the sector:
- Higher education providers (HEPs) and widening participation teams should adopt our Mapping Outcomes and Activities Tool (MOAT) as part of their evaluation planning and implementation. This will not only aid consistent and more rigorous evaluation practice at the provider level, but will enable TASO to build a bank of evidence to improve our understanding of how specific elements of multi-intervention outreach and mentoring programmes lead to particular outcomes.
- Multi-intervention outreach incorporates multiple elements. To accurately evaluate the impact of these programmes, HEPs should identify the value of each element by using our Enhanced Theory of Change tool to map how individual activities are anticipated to influence outcomes and explore more complex pathways to impact.
- Findings from the local evaluations are interim and provide limited evidence of the effectiveness of multi-intervention outreach and mentoring programmes on programme primary outcomes. When final-outcome data (Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT)-generated HE destination information) is made available in 2024, it will be possible to more accurately assess the impact of the programmes on students.
- The evaluation of online mentoring provides interesting insights into the variation in mentoring programmes across the sector and how engagement, particularly with online mentoring platforms, can be robustly measured. However, we still lack causal evidence on the impact of mentoring and need to build the evidence base on the most effective features, in terms of duration, delivery mode and type of mentor.
Access TASO’s Mapping Outcomes and Activities Tool
You can download the reports below: