Pick&Mix

Pick&Mix is a methodology for benchmarking e-learning developed in 2005 and used for benchmarking e-learning in UK universities in the period from 2005 to the current day. It is being reoriented for more international use under the new name of ELDDA.

Pick&Mix was based on a systematic review of other approaches to benchmarking e-learning, looking for commonalities of approach. One of the virtues of Pick&Mix (which gave rise to its name) is that it does not impose methodological restrictions and has incorporated (and will continue to incorporate, in line with need) criteria from other methodologies of quality, best practice, adoption and benchmarking.

Pick Mix has the following features:

1. a set of criteria split into core criteria (which each university must consider) and supplementary criteria (from which each university should select some to consider); in addition, an institution may use local criteria developed in the same style
2. guidelines, based on HEI experience, as to the total number of criteria (core plus supplementary plus local) that a university should consider
3. criteria which are a mix of ‘process’ criteria and ‘metric’ output criteria; covering student-facing and staff-facing issues as well as strategy, structure and IT topics
4. criteria described (as far as possible) using concepts, structures, processes and vocabulary familiar to those in universities (different national and sectoral variants are possible)
5. each criterion is scored on a levels 1-5 scale with an additional level 6 to signify excellence: level 1 is always sector-minimum and level 5 is reachable sector best practice in any given time period (level 6 is supposed to be out of planned reach for the majority of HEIs)
6. each score associated with a scoring statement to describe in more detail the practices associated with that level in each specific HEI
7. new criteria which can be developed to reflect changing agendas (such as plagiarism, widening participation, space planning) or taken from other criterion-based methodologies (ELTI, eMM, BENVIC, CHIRON, E-xcellence, etc) where appropriate: each such criterion can either be specific to an HEI (local criteria) or suggested for inclusion as a new supplementary criterion
8. inbuilt sector knowledge and comparability based on the use of transparent evidenced public criteria norm-referenced across the sector which is not to downplay the role of HEIs and consultants in jointly investigating and assessing each criterion
9. careful consideration given to minimise the number of core criteria so that each is clearly correlated with success in e-learning
10. no inbuilt project management or engagement methodology so that Pick&Mix can be run within a project management methodology comfortable to the HEIs involved and of appropriate weight
11. use of criteria, couched in familiar terms and clearly correlated with success, coupled with familiar and # lightweight project management, so as to lead to a "low footprint" style of benchmarking suitable for a range of HEIs, and departments within institutions as well as institution-wide approaches augmentable with deeper studies
12. an "open content" method of distribution where each final release plus its supporting documents is available under a Creative Commons license.

The current public release is the beta 3 version of Pick&Mix version 2.6 - this can be found at http://www.matic-media.co.uk/benchmarking/PnM-2pt6-beta3-full.xlsx

A variant of this with more emphasis on displaying the Critical Success Factors and Key Success Factors is at http://www.matic-media.co.uk/benchmarking/PnM-2pt6-beta3-CKSFs.xlsx

For more details on Pick&Mix and related schemes, including their use, see the HE Academy wiki.