Figure 2. The A-HEC participatory evaluation culture of inquiry

Participating initiatives can choose to make public their participation or to keep their participation private. All rankings are considered approximations and in some cases may not be accurate. A-HEC therefore does not publish rankings. The ranking process is meant to help an initiative ascertain its progress and priorities. There is no one-size fits all approach to adapting the success factors to the unique needs of each institution. However, participation in this process accomplishes at least three things that most institutions typically see as challenges. The first is getting a balanced internal view upon which to dialogue about progress and priorities. The second is to get a comparison to other online initiatives at a systems level. The third is to get a comparison of what the participant’s team is thinking about the future compared to a larger community of practitioners.

Participants are also contributing to the spreading of best practices in the community. This is because the comparison database keeps growing and evolving with each new participant initiative or a new self-audit for a previous participant. This simple, but potentially powerful process is illustrated in Figure 2.

Essentially the participants are engaging in a unique form of research through a participatory evaluation process. This is a culture of inquiry that itself is being developed and evolved by A-HEC applied to IsL and other best practice research areas.