Access and Success Academy: Comparison Groups and Causality – Can This Work for Widening Access?

This course is a part of NEON Access and Success Academy Evidence of Impact Series. Other sessions in the series include ‘Effective Methods and Practice When Working with Younger Learners‘, ‘Adopting Quantitative Methods to Demonstrate Impact‘ and ‘Dissemination: Writing Up Your Research for Publication & Presenting Findings to a Non-specialist Audience‘. 

The prime reason behind evaluating educational interventions is to establish what works. The Office for Students encourages the higher education sector to expand the use of comparison groups to establish causality, in preference to narrative and/or empirical enquiry. This course will allow delegates to consider all aspects of type 3 evaluation and the ethical debates that surround its use. It will also draw upon specific examples from NEON members who will present their approaches and the challenges they have encountered. By the end of the course delegates will:  

• Be able to describe the key features of the different types of evaluation.  

• Explain the needs for, and the principles of, quantitative causal inference.  

• Apply specific techniques from causal analyses to their own evaluations.  

• Understand how to conduct randomised controlled trials.  
• Critically evaluate the ethical arguments, both for and against the use of type 3 evaluations in relation to educational interventions.