Blog11 July 2025
Following our announcement that TASO and the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) are developing a library of evaluations in higher education – the Higher Education Evaluation Library (HEEL) – we’ve spent the last few months consulting with you to help ensure that it is as accessible, user-friendly and valuable as possible.
The HEEL will enable universities and colleges to share evaluations of their widening-participation interventions – which will then be available online for others to review, learn from, iterate, and replicate.
It’s been fantastic to see so much interest in the HEEL and the commitment across the sector to using this resource for shared learning, knowledge exchange and collaboration. We’ve gathered useful insight – from conversations and online consultations – on what the sector needs from this resource, and have fed these into ongoing development.
In response to questions, we’ve published more detailed information and FAQs on our website, including the inclusion criteria, and will develop more in-depth guidance to explain the submission process, what to include in submissions, and how to manage your publications once they are uploaded. Here are some of our initial reflections based on your feedback.
You want to improve shared learning practices
From our consultation, we saw that the primary interest in the HEEL is to encourage shared learning to improve evidence-informed practice. Most were interested in shared learning from similar projects or institutions and we will ensure that comparisons will be made possible. This was secondary to fulfilling regulatory requirements. Many of you were also excited by the prospect of the HEEL eventually improving evaluation practices by sharing evaluation plans to learn more about the approaches, tools and methodologies used by other practitioners.
You want evidence on what does not work
One thing we found came up regularly in queries was what to do with evaluations that show null or negative results. We know that all of these insights can play an important role in developing the evidence base and shared learning – at TASO we are fond of saying ‘just because it’s null, doesn’t mean it’s dull’. (We even had ‘null not dull’ stickers at our conference!)
A null result is an important finding in itself, and we strongly encourage providers to publish null, and negative results, and provide contextual information. This sort of insight can help other providers refine and adapt their practices: if something isn’t likely to meet the outcomes it’s designed to achieve, we can save effort and use capacity more efficiently by having this insight early on. It was acknowledged in the consultation process that this may hold some reputational risk but we hope to mitigate this by building in ample space for providing detailed contextual information.
You have asked for guidance on submitting evaluations to the HEEL
We heard a clear ask for thorough guidance on all steps of using the HEEL: from setting up an account for those that are not HEAT members, to using the submission portal, to updating documents once they are published and using the HEEL as a user. A thorough range of training, guidance, templates, and troubleshooting opportunities will be provided in time to guide all users – both those familiar with HEAT, and those who are new to the system – through the process.
There are some reservations about quality assurance
There were many questions about the quality assurance processes, and we understand there is a desire for feedback. However, the HEEL is intended to be a library bringing together evaluations of existing practice, without quality thresholds or judgements. We hope that the HEEL will provide the sector with a database that includes a wide range of evaluations and interventions. By not restricting submissions on the basis of standards of evidence, we hope to gain a better picture of current practice, helping us to tailor the ways in which we support the sector in the future.
There will be an appraisal process when the evaluations are used to inform the TASO toolkits.
Aside from mandatory fields – to ensure consistency and the adequate information on each evaluation – there will be no peer review process or quality review. We have, however, noted the desire for peer review or a community of practice and will consider the feasibility in future planning processes once the HEEL is launched.
You need the HEEL to be quick and easy to use
We heard the call to make submissions to the HEEL as speedy as possible and for the search function to be smooth and simple. We’ve gathered a lot of information on your requests for the search function, and will aim for the free text search and filters to be comprehensive and user-friendly to enable fast and useful searching.
We also suggested creating a regular publication of insights from the HEEL in the form of digests. These digests will be short summaries highlighting key trends, patterns and descriptive data from the evaluations, and we will make them available on the TASO website as well as the HEEL. We are still planning the format of the digests and the format will be informed by the submissions themselves. In this sense, we will be responsive to the sector’s work and interests.
Next steps
Now that sector consultation is complete, we’re working with HEAT to incorporate the feedback before we start user testing in autumn. The HEEL will be launched in spring 2026.