Short Abstract

We will introduce two digital tools recently developed by the Centre for Transforming Access and Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) and share how the Theory of Change Builder and the Higher Education Evaluation Library support higher education institutions to embed evaluation.

Description

In the UK, inequalities persist between who accesses, succeeds at, and successfully progresses from higher education. Higher education institutions run a variety of interventions aimed at addressing these inequalities, often targeted at people from socioeconomic backgrounds that are underrepresented in higher education. These interventions range from information sessions on applying to university, to wellbeing and academic skills support provision once at university, to career guidance supporting the progression from university into employment or further study. As a government What Works Centre, our role at the Centre for Transforming Access and Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) is to support efforts to evaluate the impact and implementation of these interventions. We do this by commissioning evaluations and supporting the higher education sector to run their own evaluations, in line with requirements set by the higher education regulator.

A key driver of higher education institutions evaluating their own interventions is to embed a culture of evaluation across teams and departments to ensure that the effectiveness of all interventions is assessed and this evidence is used to inform practice. Similarly, across the higher education sector, we encourage sharing evaluation findings to collectively develop a better understanding of what works to address inequalities in higher education. However, in practice, the individuals tasked with evaluation often lack adequate resources to evaluate interventions and make evidence-informed decisions.

In response to these challenges TASO has developed two freely available digital tools. These tools support two key points in the evaluation process: developing a theory of change (ToC) and disseminating evaluation findings.

The ToC Builder is an online tool that walks the user through creating a ToC for their intervention. It supports those with little prior evaluation experience by including guidance and examples from the higher education sector at each step of the way. The tool produces a ready-to-export ToC in diagram and narrative format, compliant with accessibility standards.

The Higher Education Evaluation Library (HEEL, launching in spring 2026) is a freely accessible searchable database of evaluations focused on interventions supporting access, success and progression in higher education. The HEEL will support knowledge exchange, foster collaboration, and support the dissemination of evaluation evidence on what works to reduce inequalities in higher education. It will also help identify trends and gaps in evaluation practice across the sector.

Both digital tools build on existing TASO resources, including a framework for coding interventions, and make planning evaluations and reporting findings more interactive and accessible to non-specialists. In this session, we will introduce the ToC Builder and the HEEL, including how we developed them with input from prospective users, and how they embed evaluation in higher education providers. We will explore both the practical and ideological aspects of developing digital tools for evaluation, and how digital tools can be used to expand evaluation capacity and impact in response to sector needs.