FDA/BA Management

Work Based Project Impact and Review

MOD000956

Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

Theme 3 – Presenting an Impact Study

During Topics 5-6 you will be focusing on the theme Presenting an Impact Study, which
will enable you to achieve Intended Learning Outcome 1:

• Plan and present an impact study to a critical audience demonstrating systematic,

coherent and detailed knowledge, skills and understand addressing complex
problems relevant to work based practice.

This will be achieved by covering the following topics:

• Topic 5: Mapping Evidence of Impact.

• Topic 6: Creating the Impact Study.

Your impact study will start with a mapping exercise which draws on evidence from two
sources:

1. A self-evaluation of the impact of your project: What do you think about how your
project has made an impact on you and your organisation?
2. The feedback about the impact of your project from your dissemination audience:
What do others say about the impact of your project?

Based upon the mapping exercise, you will then write a critical reflection which discusses
how the knowledge gained from the project has and may change the practice of you and
your organisation.

This will be presented in Patch 3 which will include your mapping exercise and the critical
reflection:

Patch 3: An impact study (1200 words or equivalent), which includes:

• Part 1: Impact study mapping exercise. (600 words or equivalent);

• Part 2: Critical reflection (600 words or equivalent).

The impact study will be presented to a critical audience in Topics 7-8

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

On completion of this theme you should have achieved:

• A mapping of evidence of the impact that your WBMP had made on you and your
organisation;
• A critical analysis which discusses the impact.

An impact study composed of the two bullet points above.

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

Contents
Theme 3 – Presenting an Impact Study................................................................................. 2

Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact ........................................................................... 4

5.1 What Is the Impact of Work-Based Learning on Individuals and on Organisations? ....... 5

5.2 Personal Impact ................................................................................................................ 7

5.3 Organisational Impact ...................................................................................................... 8

5.4 Activity: Mapping the Evidence of Impact to Identity Themes ........................................ 9

5.4.1 Evidence of Impact Mapping Grid ............................................................................. 9

Completing the Mapping Grid ....................................................................................... 11

5.5 References for Topic 5 .................................................................................................... 12

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

5.1 What Is the Impact of Work-Based Learning on

Individuals and on Organisations?

Let us begin by considering why employees and employers want to become engaged in
through work based learning (WBL). The Higher Education Academy’s Work based
learning: Impact study (Nixon, 2008) summarised the motivational drivers (see figure 1).
Employees want to invest in learning to improve their practice in their existing workplace
and/or in order to secure new work. Employers see WBL as bringing skills and knowledge
into the organisation, which can improve overall performance and competitiveness.

Figure 1: What employers and employees want from WBL (after Nixon, 2008, p.9).

We can see then that both employees and employers expect some impact/benefit from
WBL at the individual and organizational levels respectively.

Your Work Based Major Project can be seen as the culmination of your university study.
This is where you have integrated the research skills and theoretical understanding

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

accumulated from higher education with the experiential learning gained in the
workplace. This should potentially have significant impact on you and your organisation.

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

5.2 Personal Impact

Employees listed the following as personal impacts of WBL (Nixon, 2008):

• Increased confidence;
• Higher aspirations and motivation;
• Raised personal status;
• More self-aware as an individual;
• Learning to think and challenge assumptions;
• A greater awareness and understanding of particular issues;
• Developed new and enhanced existing skills (e .g. communication, organisation skills);
• More likely to take stock and reflect on their performance.

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

5.3 Organisational Impact

Employers listed the following as organisational impacts of their employees engaging in

WBL (Nixon, 2008):

• Established a clearer direction of travel for the organisation;

• Development of new or improved existing policies, standards and contracts;
• Improved service provision to the end users and improved quality of work;
• Increased levels of innovation;
• Improved performance of employees who are more self-sufficient and require less
direct support;
• Secured a positive attitudinal and behavioural change in staff in line with the values of
the organisation;
• Achieved external recognition and prestige.

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

5.4 Activity: Mapping the Evidence of Impact to Identity

Themes

The individual and organisational impacts listed above can help us with the next activity,
which is to map evidence of impact.

This activity will enable you to systematically collect evidence of the impact of your
project. A mapping grid has been provided which lists categories of impact and which
requires you to identify evidence of impact. The starting point has been to use the
categories identified in the previous section.

The evidence is divided into two types:

• Reflective self-evaluations on the project as a whole – from planning through to

implementation and dissemination: What benefits can you identify? What evidence
can you point to of this impact? Has the impact already happened or is it a potential
benefit for the future?
• The feedback about the impact of your project collected from your dissemination
audience: What benefits are identified? What is the evidence of this (in the
feedback)?

The mapping exercise will form the first part of patch 3 and is equivalent to 600 words.

A mapping grid is provided which can be downloaded from the VLE (Also see Appendix).
The grid uses the categories of impact found by Nixon (2008) and asks you to map
evidence against them.

5.4.1 Evidence of Impact Mapping Grid

The following template grid can be downloaded from page 5.4.1 on the LMS site.

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

Category of impact Evidence from self-evaluation Evidence from dissemination

audience feedback
Personal
increased confidence
higher aspirations
and motivation
raised personal status
more self-aware
learning to think and
challenge
assumptions
greater awareness
and understanding of
particular issues
developed skills
more likely to reflect
on performance
Organisational
established a clearer
direction of travel for
the organisation
development of new
or improved existing
policies, standards
and contracts
improved service
provision to the end
users and improved
quality of work
increased levels of
innovation
improved
performance of
employees who are
more self-sufficient
and require less
direct support
secured a positive
attitudinal and
behavioural change
in staff in line with
the values of the
organisation
achieved external
recognition and
prestige

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

Completing the Mapping Grid

You are not expected to be able to map to every category. You may find that you have
some evidence of impact that does not fit any of the categories in the first column and so
you may need to consider adding additional categories.

Evidence of impact could be in a variety of forms, for example:

• A short extract from your learning journal;

• An extract from an email e.g. from a colleague or client;
• An extract from audience feedback;
• An event or incident that occurred: give a brief account;
• Evidence from your project;
• A conversation with a colleague: give a brief account.

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MOD000956 Work Based Project Impact and Review.
Topic 5 – Mapping the Evidence of Impact

5.5 References for Topic 5

Nixon, I., 2008. Work-based Learning: Impact Study. [Online] York: Higher Education
Academy. Available at:
https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/impact_work_based_learning.pdf
[Accessed 24 May 2016].

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Some images / diagrams in this document are copied under CLA Licence – please refer to the
full Copyright Notice in the image / diagram reference for details.

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