British Council – Evaluating User Engagement

British Council - Evaluating User Engagement

Global

2022 - 2023

Countries

Global

Lead M&E Consultant(s)

Gavin Dudeney & Nicky Hockly

Project Overview

There is a large and growing body of evidence that user engagement is key to supporting successful learning outcomes for teachers and learners. The British Council offers a range of online professional development events (such as courses and webinars) and resources (such as downloadable lesson plans, podcasts and videos) to English language teachers. TCE were tasked with developing a methodology and tools to measure user engagement across a range of British Council online events and resources.

Approaches & Outputs

TCE first undertook a literature review on the topic of online user engagement and at ways of defining and measuring this. Given the restricted manner in which user engagement (UE) has been measured to date, TCE developed a new model and tool for this. This consisted of a weighted matrix across several UE dimensions to measure engagement across a range of online activities and resources. The matrix was then applied to real user datasets to provide a proof of concept, and conclusions and recommendations around user engagement drawn. The final outputs were the matrix itself, and a final report including the literature review findings, the rationale and development of the matrix, and suggesting how it could be applied by the British Council to measure UE in the future.

Impact On

The British Council’s understanding of user engagement with their online events and resources, and how to monitor and measure this quantitatively in a robust and research-based manner.

British Council – Evaluating User Engagement