Delivering and Evaluating Participation After Access: Higher Education in a Marketised System

Delivering and Evaluating Participation after Access is a timely response to the rise in discussion about how Higher Education (HE) providers support participation for disadvantaged students in HE. Chapters expand on the notion of widening participation (WP) work as being purely about getting students into HE, and considers the questions of engagement, retention, attainment and progression.

This is the first major work on the design, delivery and evaluation of student success activities by HE providers. Featuring contributions from expert practitioners in many areas of student success in the UK HE system, this edited volume presents four case studies that explore interventions to enhance success (what institutions do) and how they are evaluated for effectiveness (how institutions know if they work). The case studies offer a range of perspectives including disciplinary variations in pedagogy and practice and different evaluation approaches.

This practical, research-informed guide for HE providers that are seeking to integrate access and student success strategies across the student lifecycle, highlights a new synthesis of discourses and practices drawn from fields such as WP outreach, quality assurance and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Taken together they provide us with a unique take on how these policy/practice regimes have migrated into the student success space.

Liz Austen is Head of Evaluation and Research (Student Experience, Teaching and Learning) at Sheffield Hallam University.

Colin McCaig is Professor of Higher Education Policy in the Sheffield Institute of Education at Sheffield Hallam University.