Monitoring and evaluation arrangements Sample Clauses

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 School 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. 3.2 The Director of Higher Education Policy is the senior postholder with responsibility for the University‟s policy on Access and Widening Participation, reporting directly to the Vice-Chancellor. 3.3 The Learning, Teaching and Student Support Committee is the lead body on behalf of the University‟s Academic Council with responsibility for monitoring and evaluating the Access Agreements and the Widening Participation Strategic Statements. The annual Student Equality and Diversity reports are based on multivariate analysis of student characteristics and these reports inform University policy and strategy on Access and Widening Participation. Annual monitoring reports are considered by the Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee (QAEC) which reports directly to Academic Council. Papers are also prepared for the University Executive Board (UEB) both for discussion and debate, and for information on the resource allocations which support this core area of the University‟s activities. 3.4 Monitoring data is rigorously analysed and interpreted through the processes described. Yet the difficulty of demonstrating causality can hamper demonstration of the success of specific interventions. Changes in applicant and student behaviour during transitional periods between funding regimes inevitably pose greater challenges in terms of forecasting. The incompleteness of some data sets arising from students electing not to declare certain types of personal information, and the weaknesses of older data such as POLAR, can also limit the applicability of some reports. For these reasons the University is working closely with peer institutions, both individually and within sectors groups such as AccessHE , Linking London and Supporting Professionalism in Admissions (SPA) to share findings and case studies, and to set collaborative milestones and targets which can be contextualised by reference to broader studies of admissions, retention, achievement and graduate...

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. 7.2 The University’s adherence to this agreement and its progress in reaching the objectives indicated above will be monitored through the University’s Undergraduate Admissions Committee (jointly chaired by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and the Secretary to the Colleges’ Senior Tutors Committee) which report to the principal University and Collegiate bodies. The Committee will take advice from the Admissions Forum, the intercollegiate body charged with managing undergraduate admissions and delivering agreed targets and objectives. The Undergraduate Admissions Committee will annually review application, offer and admission trends, particularly in respect of currently under- represented groups. It will also keep under review, and advise as necessary on the amendment of admissions and recruitment processes that have a bearing on securing a wide and diverse pool of well-qualified applicants. 7.3 Scrutiny of outreach activities will be undertaken by the Outreach Steering Group (reporting to the Undergraduate Admissions Committee) which will co-ordinate and prioritise those activities and review their effectiveness. The success of outreach activities (aside from those which are web-based or of a general aspiration-raising nature) will be monitored through analyses of qualitative evaluation and attendee and application data. 7.4 The University has identified specific groups that may be particularly affected by the new financial arrangements and so has prepared an Equality Assurance Assessment (EAA) in line with BIS guidance. The University will continue to consider any potential disproportionate or adverse impact on protected groups (as defined by the Equality Act 2010) periodically via the groups described above. 7.5 We will develop systems to capture outreach activity covering UK schools and colleges. This process will facilitate a co-ordinated approach to interaction with those schools and colleges and enable the effectiveness of outreach activities to be assessed through long-term data collection on each institution’s higher education applications, offers and admissions within both a Cambridge and a national context. 7.6 Post-entry reviews will be...

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 ▇▇▇▇ (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, ▇▇▇▇ 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. 8.1 Evaluation of outreach activities and the impact of scholarship provision are essential to monitoring success. Enhanced evaluation of activities will be undertaken by increasing the breadth of evaluation. Currently, evaluation largely centres on activities undertaken within UCL. This will change to encompass all activities, both internal and external. Additional staffing resource will be recruited to take forward enhanced evaluation work. 8.2 360-degree evaluation will be utilised whereby Outreach staff, student ambassadors, targeted students/groups and teachers from schools and colleges are asked to provide both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of activities. Currently, focus groups are carried out with student ambassadors. These focus groups will be expanded to cover targeted students as well as teaching staff from schools and colleges. 8.3 Data gathered will be analysed and activities will be critically reviewed and, if this is found to be necessary, reshaped and improved. Outreach staff will work closely with colleagues in Student Funding to evaluate the impact on the student body of the UCL scholarship offering. The scholarship provision will be reviewed and, if necessary, retargeted to maximise impact. 8.4 These evaluation activities will be supported by the development of an integrated database that holds all evaluation data. This will allow for improved data interrogation and analysis across activities, enabling easier identification of successful activities and those where changes and improvements should be made. 8.5 UCL‟s performance and compliance with this Access Agreement, including the contribution to the National Scholarship Programme, its own bursary schemes, outreach activities, performance against targets and progress towards milestones, will be monitored by UCL‟s Academic Committee, on which there is student and external representation. The Academic Committee will report annually to UCL‟s Council on all matters relating to the Access Agreement. This framework is supported by regular monitoring by senior management within UCL‟s Registry and Academic Services and overseen by the Vice-▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ (Operations) and Vice- ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ (Academic and International).

Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. Strategic development of widening participation is a whole University responsibility led by the University Executive Board through the Pro-Vice Chancellor (PVC) for Learning and Teaching. The PVC chairs the Learning and Teaching Committee and its three sub-committees on behalf of Senate, including the Admissions and Outreach Sub-Committee. As a member of the University Executive Board, the PVC for Learning and Teaching ensures that strategic thinking about widening participation is at the heart of University strategic developments and reflections. This Board also includes the PVCs with responsibility for driving forward University strategies in each of the University’s five faculties (Arts and Humanities; Engineering; Medicine, Dentistry and Health; Science and Social Sciences). This strategic leadership structure ensures that widening participation is articulated within the Faculty learning and teaching strategies and practices. The University will monitor activity and evidence of impact in a number of ways. To date, Student Services teams have worked alongside Learning & Teaching Services (LeTS) staff to implement robust procedures for monitoring the activity that is delivered both by central teams and by individual faculties and academic departments. This will continue and will be strengthened by the recent integration of LeTS into the Student Services structure. In addition, in developing its Access Agreement for 2012 and beyond, the University has committed resource to the development of an academic Widening Participation Research Unit. This will allow for quantitative and qualitative research into the long term impact of our widening participation initiatives to be undertaken by research experts. Results of such research will be published as a way of sharing good practice within the sector. The evidence will also feed into continuous improvement of the activities and programmes we deliver. The unit will contribute and oversee short term research and evaluation activity, to provide a more consistent and formal approach to impact assessment and continuous improvement. On an ongoing basis, quantitative data will be used to measure outputs (e.g. number of participants, number of activities, number of schools and colleges involved) to assess the level of activity undertaken against the numerical targets we set. We will also use a range of evaluation techniques to measure the effectiveness of individual activities and longer term widening participation pro...

Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The University is employing the services of its School of Applied Social Sciences and its Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) to undertake evaluation and monitoring. The Centre, which works with schools nationally, has access to very large quantities of relevant background data against which to evaluate the University’s access measures. The University is also collaborating in a research project to evaluate the retention benefits of bursaries.

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. 7.2 An independent review of the Arts University Bournemouth Access Agreement by the Learning and Development Unit from Cardiff University was very positive. The reviewers found that the Agreement provided a good statement of the approaches to be taken, and a strong evaluation of the university’s progress in promoting fair access and identified clear objectives, targets and milestones. 7.3 The University receives an annual report on its Widening Participation activity which reports on activity, and outcomes. The report is considered in detail by the Equalities Committee, which makes direct report to Academic Board. The milestones and targets outlined in this Access Agreement enable an evaluative consideration of progress, and a regular review of success. 7.4 The University further intends to build upon the current self-assessment process by developing an integrated Targeting, Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy that focuses both on the OFFA National Strategy for Access and Student Success and the OFFA Strategic Plan. The strategy, based on HEFCE guidance, will have four levels: Level 1: Basic monitoring – progress against targets and milestones, outputs and volumes Level 2: Targeting – proportions of the target groups benefitting from WP activities Level 3: Measurement of outcomes – impacts and unintended consequences, short-, medium- and long-term Level 4: Value for money – cost-effectiveness.

Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The University will be monitoring annually the composition of its full-time home undergraduate population, using a range of internal and external WP indicators. Monitoring will be undertaken by the University Planning Office, and data will be regularly viewed by the appropriate individuals and committees across the University.

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 ▇▇▇▇▇▇ 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 ▇▇▇▇▇▇ 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...