In 2019, the EDIN Committee agreed, as a collective community of practice, to consider appropriate evaluation tools and metrics to demonstrate the impact of academic development activities. EDIN members were invited to contribute to a two-part workshop in order to (i) to discuss and define impact in the context of our work as academic developers, and (ii) to identify how we could demonstrate the impact of our activities.

We are delighted to announce the availability of the online EDIN Impact Analysis Tool, an easy to use, step-by-step, online tool that allows you to plan, evaluate or think more generally about the impact of an educational development activity. It includes a series of curated articles/resources to allow deeper exploration of topics, and at the end you can export your work to a Microsoft Word document. The tool allows you to evaluate both individual activities as well as more general practice through worked examples.

We know that academic developers in Ireland and internationally are increasingly being called upon to demonstrate the impact of their work on their institutions, on academic practice, and most importantly, on students’ learning. Understanding the nature of impact in teaching and learning, and how it occurs, is a key first step in ensuring that resources and efforts invested by those in the higher education community result in positive changes to learning, practice, culture, structures and/or policy (National Forum 2019). We hope that this online resource will help in demonstrating that impact and we look forward to getting your feedback on its benefits and uses.

We would like to acknowledge and thank all EDIN members who have contributed to the development of this resource. We wish also to acknowledge SEDA and Veronica Bamber who have given permission for the tables included in SEDA Special 34 to be adapted for use in this online impact analysis tool.