Five students sitting around a table chatting and making notes

The Office for Students (OfS) has announced a new approach to equality of opportunity in higher education, with a focus on evaluation. Higher education providers are being asked to use TASO’s Theory of Change templates as part of their access and participation plans (APPs).

We’ve covered the importance of developing a Theory of Change and how our Core Theory of Change guidance can help, but what can our Enhanced Theory of Change guidance do for you?

How can the Enhanced Theory of Change guidance help me?

Our Enhanced Theory of Change guidance should be used when you want to robustly evaluate interventions and activities.

The guidance provides a format for capturing lots of information about activities, outcomes and the mechanisms by which we expect change to happen. It includes: context; mapping of links between activities and outcomes; and identifying assumptions and change mechanisms.

What are the main differences between the Core and Enhanced Theory of Change approaches?

Our core approach to developing a Theory of Change is designed to be simple. It provides a high-level snapshot of how we can expect an activity to lead to its intended impact. You do not need a background in evaluation to understand this approach. It’s also useful if you want to communicate the overall strategic direction of your programme or activity to  senior leaders/stakeholders.

Our enhanced approach to Theory of Change builds upon the core approach, providing a format for capturing more granular information about the activities/interventions and a framework for mapping complex or multi-intervention programmes. The enhanced approach is designed for evaluability, rather than simplicity, and identifies change mechanisms to help us map why we expect change to happen as well as what changes we expect to occur.

Why has TASO developed the Enhanced Theory of Change guidance?

We have been supporting the sector to develop Theories of Change for a while, however, following the delivery of several complex evaluations we wanted to ‘package up’ our learning on the different approaches to Theory of Change and develop more nuanced guidance  which would provide further support to the sector, allowing them to robustly evaluate the interventions and activities being carried out at their provider. This is especially important now given the OfS’ new approach to equality of opportunity in HE.

Can you give me an example?

Our Enhanced Theory of Change templates integrate learnings from recent projects and will support you in your evaluation.

I want to know more

If you want to delve deeper into Theory of Change development please take a look at our resources page which includes our guidance and templates.

If you have any further questions please get in touch with us at info@taso.org.uk.