Empowering Collaboration: Practical Approaches to Student Equity Program Evaluation

Student equity program evaluation is an emerging field of practice in the Australian higher education sector. Driven by reporting requirements from the Department of Education, it is incentivised through targeted funding provided by the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES). Currently, the evaluation capability of equity practitioners is highly variable. Universities have responded to this challenge by employing evaluation experts to work with their student equity teams, or by commissioning expert consultants to build evaluation capability and/or undertake evaluations of student equity programs. This practice report focuses on a project that aimed to explore best practice in equity program evaluation, recognising that these are often collaborative endeavours. Through structured reflective activities, the diverse project team generated insights on factors that enable or challenge evaluation partnerships. The report concludes with a set of principles for implementing collaborative evaluation projects and outlines the key roles and responsibilities of an evaluation team.