Evaluation

Understanding our impact and supporting continual learning and improvement is essential to ensure we target resources effectively. Our evaluation team works to ensure that what we do is evidence-based.

That work covers 3 different strands:

Evidence informed planning and practice

Our dedicated evaluation team reviews and collates evidence from around the world to feed into our engineering and technology outreach delivery and decision making. Drawing on our own evaluations and those conducted by other organisations, we learn from the best published research and identify gaps in knowledge where we may be able to test new approaches.

We're currently working on the first in a series of 'what works' reviews, looking at what works to build engineering and technology career aspirations in girls. The review will be shared on Tomorrow's Engineers.

Testing and evaluation

We want our work with young people to make a difference, so we evaluate our outreach programmes to understand what is working, make changes and improvements and demonstrate impact.

We share the results to add to the collective understanding of what works well and where we can improve. You can access the headlines and for each of our programmes below.

 

Producing and sharing learning

To support the wider community we share our learning on evaluation methods and on what works in STEM outreach through a range of resources and activities. Our tools and methodology are available on the Tomorrow’s Engineers website, we hope other organisations will find them useful as they evaluate their work.

These resources include guides to designing survey and conducting evaluations with young people, an interactive measures bank with sample questions and our impact framework for engineering outreach as well as webinars and tutorials on how to get the most out of them.

 

 

Robotics Challenge

This evaluation drew on surveys with over 550 students and 130 teachers taking part in the Robotics Challenge heats. We explore which students take part in the programme, their experiences and the benefits they feel they gained from the programme. See the infographic or download the full report to

In October 2022, a stand-alone optional session, 'Introducing Robotics' was launched as part of the Robotics Challenge programme. To understand whether the lesson has an impact on students’ interest in taking part in robotics or coding activities, we piloted a pre and post evaluation in the 2022/23 academic year. See the Introducing robotics lesson the full evaluation report.

View the infographic

Introducing Robotics lesson

Download the full report

 

EDI Bursaries

This report provides on overview of EngineeringUK EDI bursary schemes implemented during the 2022/23 academic year.

Our bursary schemes operate through several of our programmes (Robotics Challenge, Big Bang at School and Big Bang Fair) as well as supporting access to Neon activities. We evaluated their impact using a mix of monitoring data, surveys and interviews.

Read the full report here