What is EvidenceNet?

EvidenceNet is a service provided by the Higher Education Academy to promote the use of evidence in learning and teaching in Higher Education.  Through EvidenceNet activity we aim to:

• Raise awareness of the evidence base around learning and teaching issues
• Enhance and improve people's understanding of the nature of evidence and its implications for student learning
• Encourage people to contribute appropriately to that evidence base.   

We aim to expand, support, and nurture the EvidenceNet community by providing:

• Tools to enable access to evidence and syntheses of this evidence. The first of these tools is the repository of resources, currently in development. Through the repository we will provide easy access to research and practice-based evidence and to syntheses of existing evidence.
• Spaces, both real and virtual, in which people can engage with others to explore evidence-based practice and its implications for students' learning. This wiki site and our ning site are first of our virtual spaces and we also plan to support face-to-face events to enable colleagues in the sector to explore how they can use evidence.

What is happening on this site?

This wiki is provided as part of EvidenceNet, and is one example of the ways in which this service is supporting people's use of evidence by providing them with spaces and tools. Its purpose is:

• To provide a space for those interested in learning and teaching in Higher Education that can act as a focus as they discuss, share and explore key issues, and the evidence that relates to these.
• Through a collaborative process, to create pages which summarise these issues and the related evidence.
• To identify shared themes and connections between different issues, to encourage the cross-fertilisation of ideas and eliminate duplication of effort in the sector.
• To identify gaps in available evidence to inform priorities for future work.
•  

We want to encourage people to explore and discuss evidence and so this wiki provides a space for people to create and edit pages about key themes and issues in learning and teaching in HE. We also want to identify links between different areas of learning and teaching to encourage people to look beyond their immediate area of interest and see how research in other areas can usefully inform their practice. We invite you to browse and update these pages in order to create a resource that is current and applicable.  

This is a new site and currently contains information about a limited number of themes in HE learning and teaching, but with your help it can evolve into an invaluable resource for those working in the HE sector. We've chosen a few of our current pages to give you an idea of the kind of resource that we would like to build:

Student Retention and Success

Introduction to Widening Participation

e-Portfolios

e-Learning Research Projects 200809