Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. Monitoring of the targets and milestones identified within this Access Agreement is addressed on an on-going basis through the use of the University’s management information system, which is updated as new data becomes available (overnight in some cases) and presents key performance data for use by the University Board, Academic Board and its sub-committees, the Senior Leadership Team, Colleges, Schools and Services. In addition, as part of our new strategy, we are enhancing our ability to monitor impacts at the more detailed level, through arrangements to track the progress of students involved in specific initiatives or in receipt of financial support and overall monitoring of any differentials in levels of access, retention, attainment and progression by equality characteristics and other factors known to impact on these aspects of the student lifecycle. As we have referenced throughout this agreement, we regularly collect feedback on the impact of individual initiatives and programmes of activity and take soundings from students on the appropriateness and effectiveness of the support arrangements we have established. We are in the process of purchasing the HEAT database, which will provide longitudinal tracking and enable us to assess the effectiveness and impact of our access and student success initiatives, and we are hoping for this to be in place by September 2016. We monitor annually the progression of students from HE courses offered through partner organisations to ‘top-up’ courses at UCLan and progression of students from the foundation year programmes and are working to identify any particular groups which may require intervention and support. The University is exploring its institutional data in more detail to identify different aspects of under-representation within the access, success and progression remits to inform our approaches moving forward. As referenced earlier in the document, we also draw on findings from national research and evaluation to ensure we are able to maximise the impact of our activities and resources and support our students effectively in fulfilling their full potential. Our Access Agreements are monitored through reports to the university’s Student Experience Committee, which is a sub-committee of Academic Board and is chaired by the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience). The Students’ Union is represented on this Committee. Overall responsibility for the Access Agreement resides with our Pro Vice-Chancellor, who...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 7.1 Annually, the University reports to the Office for Fair Access, OFFA, in its Annual Monitoring Report. This includes all expenditure from additional fee income on financial support for lower income students and other under- represented groups and reports progress against objectives and milestones. We look forward to the development of the national evaluation framework to inform our evaluation of access and student success activities effectively.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The widening participation agenda, retention rates and success across the student lifecycle are overseen by the University’s Student Access and Progress Committee. The Committee chaired by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and with representation from the Guild of Students, receives and considers regular reports and analysis of institutional performance in a range of areas (such as continuation rates, student equality benchmarks, HESA performance Indicators, student experience surveys, outreach activity evaluation, etc.). In addition, the University Education Committee, also chaired by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and with representation from the Guild, receives an annual progress report, approves WPSA and OFFA reporting and considers the annual report from the Academic Skills Centre. Within the University’s Outreach team there is a dedicated Officer with specific responsibility for evaluation; this post works closely with Outreach Officers and with Aimhigher on the evaluation of activities. The Outreach Evaluation Strategy for 2015-2018 supports our commitment to evidence-based practice in widening participation and outreach, and to facilitating a culture of learning and continuous improvement. We are committed to generating evidence-based information from timely and robust evaluations to inform and support our outreach work. The overall aim of the Evaluation Strategy is to provide a framework for producing high quality evidence-based monitoring and evaluation information to support learning, improvement, innovation, accountability and strategic decision-making. The key objectives of the strategy are to: Support the generation of evaluation evidence to improve fair access to higher education by: o Understanding what we do; o Identifying what approaches work in promoting fair access and social mobility; o Identifying where we can improve to increase the effectiveness of our widening participation policies and interventions; and o Supporting strategic decision making and allocation of resources. Provide direction on our approach to evaluation to ensure information generated is robust, relevant and useful Provide a framework for future evaluations and linking them to strategic decision-making by setting out the key focus areas for evaluations and the main evaluation questions they will seek to address Provide a plan for outreach evaluations over the next 3 years, which will be reviewed and updated annually. We have a comprehensive evaluation...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 7.1 The University will continue its policy of making admissions statistics publicly available, through the University of Cambridge Reporter and its web-site. Those statistics include data on the number of applications and acceptances by school type, region, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic classification.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The Pro Director (Learning and Teaching) is the senior manager with ultimate responsibility for access and widening participation. SOAS’ commitment to access is further supported by faculties and departments through the planning, implementation and monitoring of various measures, particularly in relation to retention, progression and collaboration. Performance in widening participation and access are monitored by the Academic Development Committee chaired by the Pro-Director (Learning and Teaching) and are also considered by the External Relations Committee (chaired by the Registrar and Secretary) and the Student Experience Committee (chaired by the Xxxx (Languages and Cultures) and, at the highest level, discussed at Academic Board and Governing Body. All areas of SOAS have a responsibility to support widening participation and fair access. The core SOAS Widening Participation Team is based in the Academic Development Directorate (ADD). The team works extensively with the Student Recruitment and Admissions Office, Faculty Offices (Languages and Culture, Law and Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities), Registry and Student Services and the Students’ Union on issues of access, admissions’ criteria, student support and retention. The implementation of this access agreement will be supported by all these areas. The body responsible for the delivery of the Access Agreement is the OFFA Steering Group comprised of; Pro- Director (Learning and Teaching), Registrar and Secretary, Xxxx of Law and Social Sciences, Director of Finance and Planning, Director of Academic Development and Head of Widening Participation. This group reports to the Director of SOAS. An action plan will be developed, in collaboration with the Students Union, to support the implementation of the Access Agreement and this will be monitored by the Steering Group. The Director of Academic Development will be responsible for delivering the action plan reporting to the Pro Director (Learning and Teaching). A Working Group comprises of key staff working on areas relating to access, student success and finance will provide advice and feedback on the progress of implementation.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The University recognises the importance of monitoring and evaluation to inform the development of its access and student success and has developed an evaluation strategy which allows it to demonstrate the impact of its WP activity. Local level evaluation undertaken by each area of activity is fed into a central evaluation template. This allows an institutional overview of areas of success and areas for future development to ensure spend is based on evidence of impact. Evaluation is an iterative process and teams involved in WP activity meet regularly to discuss the progress of activities and share good practice. Use is made of existing management information available from national datasets (such as UK Performance Indicators of Higher Education) and internally available data, as well as the monitoring data collected by all activities about its participants. Qualitative and quantitative data collected by means of, for example, questionnaires are also used to assess the effectiveness of the delivery of specific activities to inform future development, as well as to gauge the short term influence of interventions on individuals’ aspirations toward HE and attainment. Such methods have been designed so that they are comparable across different activities and age groups where possible. The University will also look at ways of monitoring cohorts of individuals involved in WP activity from pre-application outreach work throughout the student lifecycle. This will also aid in its understanding of the impact of interventions. Challenges in accessing data about wider progression to HE remain and difficulties in determining data on, for example, attainment pre-university will need to be addressed. The University will make use of the new Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) to measure the progress of participants in Access initiatives as and when this becomes available. However in the meantime, the University will do all it can to endeavour to collect this information and is open to working collaboratively where potential networks of opportunity exist. Evaluation of the effect of financial support on student retention and success will also continue to be carried out. As well as analysis of withdrawal and attainment data, this will also take the form of questionnaires to those in receipt of awards, feedback from our first year experience survey and the CFE research evaluating the National Scholarship programme. The University has a Student Financial Support Working gr...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 3.1 Progression, Achievement and Employability are monitored routinely in relation to the KPIs identified at University level. The strategic objectives set at Faculty and subject level are monitored annually as part of the planning cycle. The performance of the academic portfolio is monitored in parallel with the performance of students. Internal statistics are benchmarked with Unistats data at course level. Outreach activities are informed by analysis of applicant and student data by feeder institution and borough, drawing on data provided through the DfE, HESA, the Student Loans Company, the GLA, and London Boroughs. From 2015/16 greater focus will be given to recording the impact of Access and Student Success initiatives.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 11.1 Progression, Achievement and Employability are monitored routinely in relation to the KPIs identified at University level. The strategic objectives set at Faculty and subject level are monitored annually as part of the planning cycle. The performance of the academic portfolio is monitored in parallel with the performance of students. Internal statistics are benchmarked with Unistats data at course level. Outreach activities are informed by analysis of applicant and student data by feeder institution and borough, drawing on data provided through the DfE, HESA, the Student Loans Company, the GLA, LondonCouncils, and individual London Boroughs. Since 2016-17 greater focus has being given to evaluation through the Student Experience Group chaired by the Deputy Vice –Chancellor. Financial support provision is evaluated by the Scholarships Committee which is chaired by a member of the Court of Governors, reporting to the Executive Board. This includes funding awards made by the Xxxxxxx Xxxx Trust, applications for which are coordinated through the Executive Board to ensure a clear strategic alignment with the University’s targets and objectives.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 5.1 The measures set out in this Agreement and the progress against targets and milestones will be monitored by the Student Experience Committee on behalf of Academic Board. It will use the targets set out in paragraph 4 above and will be assessed using the four levels of evaluation set out in HEFCE Circular Letter 24/10: basic monitoring; assessment of targeting; measurement of outcomes; and assessment of value for money.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. This section details how the measures set out in the Agreement (including collaborative work) are monitored and evaluated. Statistical measures will be monitored on an annual basis by the Planning Office as part of the analysis of the HESA return and HESA Performance Indicators. Collaborative targets will be monitored via the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT). Canterbury Xxxxxx Church University is a founding member of the collaborative Higher Education Access Tracker Service (HEAT) that assists members in the targeting, monitoring and evaluation of both their individual and their collaborative Fair Access activities. It allows member universities to demonstrate outreach participation in relation to success at key transition point, collectively explore best practice in combining qualitative and quantitative research on outreach and in the future, perhaps, facilitate the development of collaborative targets. Membership of the HEAT service assists Canterbury Xxxxxx Church University in fully understanding patterns of participation in outreach and the effectiveness of different types and combinations of outreach, something which is made possible by the collaborative nature of the service. Individual members use the HEAT database to record outreach activity and can see where individuals have engaged in activities with more than one HEAT university. Collectively this allows the central HEAT service to analyse the timing and combinations of activities that show most impact on enrolment in HE. It can take some time for data about young participants in outreach to mature to the point of understanding their patterns of enrolment in HE as well as their retention and success rates. In the meantime, the HEAT service has developed a model of matching a number of different administrative datasets to the HEAT database which will afford the University a better understanding of the relationship between outreach and key educational outcomes at both pre and post 16, before any enrolment takes place. The collective size and diversity of the database will mean this relationship can be explored against multiple participant characteristics, contributing to the University and the sector's understanding of outcomes for different underrepresented groups and recognising that widening participation students are not a homogenous group. Where HEAT data has matured it allows the University to understand the relationship between outreach participation and HE access, success (retenti...
