Evaluation Officer: maternity cover

Evaluation Officer: maternity cover | 12-month full-time contract

The Evaluation Officer will work on TASO’s research and evaluation programme to develop a better understanding of what works to support widening participation and student success

Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) is an affiliate What Works Centre, and part of the UK government’s What Works Network. Our aim is to help eliminate equality gaps in higher education through evidence-informed practice.

TASO was set up in 2019 and became an independent charity in April 2021. Our work focuses on the generation, synthesis and dissemination of high-quality evidence about effective practice in widening participation and improving student outcomes. We primarily focus on developing and disseminating causal evidence and we encourage the higher education sector to do the same by providing higher education professionals access to research, toolkits, evaluation guidance, networks, evaluation training and more.

The Evaluation Officer will work on TASO’s research and evaluation programme to develop a better understanding of what works to support widening participation and student success.

Under the guidance of a Research or Evaluation Manager, the Evaluation Officer will help develop a suite of high-quality resources and step-by-step guidance to support universities and colleges to better evaluate the activities and programmes they deliver. This will include developing evaluation guidance documents, pages for our website, webinars and training materials. The officer will help deliver training based on these materials to a wide range of external stakeholders.

The officer may also help commission new projects designed to develop evaluation guidance for practitioners, evaluators and researchers from multiple institutions. They will work across these projects to manage and monitor progress, collate findings, analyse data and help steer the overall programme of work. They may also undertake internal research projects themselves, including synthesising secondary research; conducting qualitative, quantitative and/or survey research.

The role will involve substantial stakeholder management, liaising with various interested parties outside TASO, convening stakeholder groups and supporting training sessions. The Evaluation Officer will have strong communication skills and be able to convey their findings, including complex quantitative information and advanced evaluation methods (particularly causal impact evaluation methods), clearly and will support TASO to influence broader policy discussion. They will work both independently and –on more complex tasks – under supervision.

Among other responsibilities, the role will include the following duties:

• Helping develop a suite of high-quality guidance to support universities and colleges to better evaluate the activities and programmes they deliver.
• Using these resources and materials to deliver training – in-person and online – to a wide range of external stakeholders.
• Helping develop theories of change and evaluation plans for individual interventions and multi-intervention programmes.
• Conducting desk-based research, reviewing existing literature to synthesize the quality of evidence on a given topic and collate examples of sector good practice.
• Providing support to the Research and Evaluation Managers in the commissioning of external research and evaluation.
• Overseeing funded projects, ensuring delivery to timelines, value for money for TASO, and timely and proactive risk assessment and mitigation.
• Helping design, run and analyse the results of research projects in collaboration with multiple external organisations. This may include qualitative and quantitative research.
• Contributing to the administration and secretariat for a number of advisory panels formed of external stakeholders.
• Working with the Research and Evaluation Managers to develop TASO’s relationships with key stakeholders in the HE sector.
• Developing/maintaining knowledge of cutting-edge research and evaluation which is relevant to TASO’s work. Use this knowledge to contribute to the delivery of blog posts,…