Blog22 October 2026
Submissions to the HEEL: how to be brave and balanced
Pete Crowson, Evaluation and Research Coordinator and Mike Kerrigan, Strategic Data and Intelligence Manager, Nottingham Trent University
Evaluation works best when the work is collaborative. Not just collaborating with the participants of an intervention or the practitioners who deliver a programme,but collaborating with other evaluators. Learning from each other, pooling data and knowledge, identifying overlapping programmes, and even using those opportunities to experiment and pilot new things together.
But the reality is, the sector doesn’t work that way.
Evaluation tends to be done in institutional isolation, and a lot of evaluation ‘graft’ happens in your home office, with loads of coffee. We write evaluation reports that sit within our own departments, we present findings internally, and we only very occasionally share outside our organisation or institution. We might take an evaluation output to a conference, write it up fully as a journal article piece, or discuss and share ideas through local or regional networks (like the Midlands Evaluation Group that Pete co-chairs). But we can do better than that.
Organisations like TASO are working with the sector to enhance evaluation knowledge and expertise to lead to more robust evaluations, but what we haven’t had is a place to see what everyone else is actually finding. The Higher Education Evaluation Library (HEEL), is looking to fix that.
It is a great idea, and we’re really excited to see what happens. However, we in higher education will need to consider how and what we upload to the HEEL if we want this to be a success.
Quality, quantity and kudos
Pete enjoys running (see previous post about the parallels of running goals and theory of change) and Mike is a keen cyclist. Both of us upload to Strava, and activities range from 100km rides, to 5k Parkrun PBs, to a five-minute nip to the shop. There’s big variation in quality and quantity.
Why are we talking about Strava? Well, there are two key parallels relevant for thinking about submissions to the HEEL.
The first way is that we fill up the HEEL with everything. Every draft, every pilot, every three-participant focus group write-up that wasn’t really meant to travel beyond the team delivering a niche programme. If we choose to dump everything onto the HEEL, then it risks turning the whole thing into a box-ticking exercise of who can upload the most stuff.
The second is literally the opposite problem, and one we think is more likely: Institutions cherry-pick their best work. The evaluation of a flagship programme that shows a statistically significant positive effect. The intervention that worked exactly as the theory of change predicted and looks great as part of university promotion. But equally important and what we really must see, is the stuff that didn’t work.
Null is not dull
Earlier this year, TASO published its research findings that email nudges and big data alone do not support student wellbeing or academic engagement. A null result was published. Hurrah! As TASO once proudly displayed on their conference stickers, “null is not dull”.
Sometimes a null result feels like a dead end, but it’s often the most useful thing in the room. Null is a rare beast because, understandably, no one wants to publish ‘this didn’t do what we hoped’ or ‘our evaluation method was a failure’. But those things are often the biggest lessons and most important pieces.
A library crammed with success stories teaches us nothing about what doesn’t work. And as an evaluator, I really want to know that stuff. In high-risk sectors such as healthcare and aviation, publishing errors and near misses is not only best practice, it’s compulsory as it’s crucial for improving quality and safety.
Quality assurance begins at home
Evaluations can be submitted to the HEEL at any stage, from a draft plan through to a fully written report. This means the HEEL reflects what the sector is doing. But any kind of quality control doesn’t just disappear, it moves on to the institution. And quite rightly so. Submitters should absolutely be their own arbiters.
Each institution will need to develop their own decision-making processes for submissions and strike the right balance between uploading anything and everything and cherry-picking the very best.
This requires a process that blends an objective and subjective view of quality, balances institutional reputation, meets the needs of evaluators across the sector, and considers what is required to maximise the value of an open-access library. It needs to be relevant, ethical, accessible, reputationally sound (although not purely marketing pieces), and a true reflection of the evaluation work we do. Because without this internal scrutiny, we risk turning submitting to the HEEL into a performative exercise.
The NTU approach
So this is how we’re doing it at Nottingham Trent University (NTU):
The NTU submission process for the HEEL is filtered through an approval panel. This panel is chaired by our Strategic Data and Intelligence Manager (Access and Participation), and comprises:
- a minimum of three academic colleagues
- two senior managers from within the department responsible for evaluating the university’s access and participation work
- one Head of Academic Development.
This is a mix of academic and professional services staff with a comprehensive understanding of evaluative practice, and strategic responsibilities across the university.
Then there is the process:
Stage 1: Initial submission
The author submits their report to the chair for approval. The chair considers the report overall, and judges it on its suitability for submission to the HEEL against several quality criteria. Any suggestions are fed back to the author(s).
Stage 2: AI assessment
Reports are assessed against clearance criteria using a pre-configured Copilot agent, thus providing an objective assessment. If Copilot highlights any concerns not previously realised, these are fed back to the authors.
Stage 3: Wider panel assessment
The chair allocates each report to two panel members (one academic colleague, one professional services) who assess against similar scrutiny criteria to the previous stages.
Stage 4: Notification
Panel members communicate their decision to the chair. If approved, the chair uploads to the HEEL. If not approved, the report is returned with feedback.
The good, the bad and the ugly
Our review process will catch a factual error or an ethical oversight. It will ensure we don’t publish anything that could harm our reputation. It will ensure that we remain sector relevant and aligned with regulatory expectations. It will ensure that we consider the Office for Students standards of evidence. It will ensure that our reporting is clear, accessible and free from unnecessary jargon. And so on. Okay, it might not do much about our discomfort of putting an average evaluation report with a mixed result next to a comparator institution’s report which managed to nail their evaluation and included pretty charts. But we need to be brave. This is what the sector has been crying out for.
If the HEEL is going to work, the sector needs to treat every submission with the same generosity it currently has for the flagship ones. It’s our job to make sure we submit the honest, unglamorous, challenging failures too. These can, and indeed should be, every bit as crucial.
So we ask that we all make sure to give each other some much needed kudos for the bad runs and average cycles, not just the personal bests. Because that’s when the HEEL becomes what’s intended. What we need. A resource the sector can genuinely learn from.
HEEL launch
Join us online on 25 November (10:30–12:00) for the official launch of the Higher Education Evaluation Library (HEEL).