Volume 5, Issue 3 May 2006

NSSE Enters Eighth Year
By the Numbers: Sampling Error
NSSE in the News
Featured School
NSSE Workshop Goes East!
NSSE Roadshow

NSSE Enters Eighth Year

After surveying almost 2 million students at close to 1000 different four-year institutions, NSSE enters its eighth year by launching registration for the spring 2007 administration on June 1, 2006. NSSE staff are diligently working to further streamline the registration process, create an institutional interface that is even more efficient, enhance reports and other deliverables participating institutions receive, and provide more detailed examples of how institutions across the country are putting their data to use.

The following items are needed to complete your institution’s NSSE 2007 registration:

• Estimated undergraduate enrollment
• Contact information for institutional NSSE contacts
• Administration mode choice

We have postponed the need to make decisions about oversampling and consortium participation in order to simplify the registration process. NSSE staff will follow up with registered institutions on these features in October.

We are enthusiastically looking forward to working with you in the coming year. If you have questions about registering for NSSE 2007 please contact our office. To register, visit the NSSE web site.

By the Numbers: Sampling Error--A Tool for Understanding your Response Rate

Statistical analysis relies on the assumption that survey responses from a randomly selected sample of a population can accurately reflect responses as if everyone in the population had replied. Sampling error is an estimate of the margin by which the population score for your institution on a given item could differ from the reported score as the result of bias in the random sample selection.

Sampling error is an important statistic to keep in mind when looking at your response rate. For example, if 60% of your sample reply “very often” to a particular item and the sampling error is 5%, then you can interpret that most likely 55% to 65% of the entire population would respond “very often.” Higher response rates generally decrease sampling error, although large institutions with lower response rates may still achieve an acceptable sampling error if their sample size is large enough.

Sampling errors are reported as part of the Respondent Characteristics Table that you will receive in your Institutional Report this summer. You can also see your preliminary response rate at any time through the Institution Interface, accessible from our web site. Using your response rate, you can use the sampling error calculator on our Web site to help you estimate your sampling error.

NSSE in the News

National media continues to report on NSSE as a source of information about the effective educational practices. Since the last E-News back in February, USA Today and Inside Higher Education have again discussed how NSSE data is a useful tool for measuring the quality of a student’s education. Many participating institutions reported their findings from previous years as well as noting their involvement in this year’s administration.

USA Today: "What high schoolers need: Cheat sheet on universities." NSSE is mentioned in this USA Today article highlighting the difficulty finding institutions that exceed in quality educational practices. (2/21/06 – estimated 5,200,000 daily readership).

Inside Higher Ed: "Reforming Selective College Admissions." The author discusses how selective institutions need to address their admissions policies: “Work on a way to provide more meaningful comparative information about your schools. The National Survey of Student Engagement sounds like an intriguing start.” (2/28/06- unknown readership- free online).

Indiana University: "George Kuh receives lifetime achievement award." Our very own George Kuh received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) (3/28/06).

As always, you can view all NSSE and FSSE related articles here: http://nsse.iub.edu/news/index.cfm.

Featured School

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has used NSSE data to examine the effectiveness of its First-Year Seminars (FYS) and Introduction to an Honors University Seminars (IHUS). Each first-year initiative has distinct programmatic goals related to the NSSE Benchmarks for Effective Educational Practice.

FYS were designed to provide first-year students with a small group academic experience that allows for active and collaborative learning with faculty and peers. UMBC was able to confirm the benefits of FYS through comparison of course evaluations and NSSE data among participants and non-participants; those who took part in a FYS reported higher scores on the Level of Academic Challenge and Active and Collaborative Learning benchmarks. FYS participants also reported higher gains regarding UMBC’s contribution to certain aspects of their educational and personal development: writing and speaking clearly and effectively, understanding people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and contributing to the welfare of their community.

IHUS was designed not only to enhance the academic skills of first-year students, but also to teach them about and encourage their use of support services at UMBC. IHUS participants scored higher than non-participants on the Supportive Campus Environment benchmark.

Join Us – Fall Regional NSSE Users Workshop at Southern Connecticut State

The NSSE Institute staff will be on the road co-hosting a Regional NSSE Users Workshop at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 19-20, 2006. Through a combination of plenary, concurrent interest sessions, group activities, and demonstrations, we hope to help new and experienced participants link NSSE data to other institutional data, use FSSE to understand faculty expectations for student engagement, and gain insight into educationally effective practice. We will also be offering an optional post-conference, hands-on SPSS workshop.

We invite you to submit a proposal for a workshop session on how your institution is using its NSSE data, communicating its results to internal and external constituents, or incorporating NSSE data into accreditation, institutional assessment, and improvement initiatives.

Please visit the NSSE Institute Web site for full details on the workshop including an online registration form at http://nsse.iub.edu/institute.

NSSE Road Show

NSSE Staff presented 13 sessions at the Association for Institutional Research in Chicago, IL May 14-18. The AIR sessions covered a spectrum of topics, including focus on DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practice) approaches to learning, methods for more effective data analysis, characteristics of first-year students, and informational sessions about NSSE for both users and external constituencies. More details about NSSE presentations can be found at http://nsse.iub.edu/conferences/index.cfm.

NSSE staff members are presenting at the following national conferences:

Conference	Location	Date
International Conference on Student Retention	Las Vegas, NV	May 21-23
NASPA 2006 International Assessment and Retention Conference	Phoenix, AZ	June 16-19
Summer Institute of First Year Assessment	Asheville, NC	June 25-27
BEAMS Summer Academy	Rio Grande, Puerto Rico	July 17-20
Noel-Levitz National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing, and Retention	Denver, CO	July 19-21
American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) Academic Affairs Summer Meeting	San Francisco, CA	July 27-30

Other conference highlights:

• At the NASPA 2006 International Assessment and Retention Conference, Jillian L. Kinzie will present “Using NSSE Results to Assess Educational Effectiveness in the Learning College” with Randy Jorgensen of Washington State University. Jillian L. Kinzie, Pu-Shih Daniel Chen, and Robert Aaron will facilitate a pre-conference workshop, “Maximizing Use of NSSE Results in Assessment and Retention Initiatives.” Pu-Shih Daniel Chen will also present a session titled, “Nonresponse Effect in a Large-scale Student Survey:  Lessons Learned from the National Survey of Student Engagement.” 


• Patrick O’Day will present “Moving Ahead without Falling Behind:  Managing Information” at the American Bar Association (ABA) Associate Deans’ Conference.


• Susan D. Johnson will facilitate a workshop at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity titled, “Perfect Ladies Don’t Become Provosts: A Roundtable for Administrators, Faculty, Students, Staff, and Consultants of Color.” 


• Thomas F. Nelson Laird will present “Using the National Survey of Student Engagement to Understand Students’ Experiences in the Agricultural and Related Sciences” at the joint meeting of the American Society of Animal Science and the American Dairy Science Association.


• Some of George D. Kuh’s upcoming presentations include:


• “What Matters to Student Success in College: A Review of the Literature” at the SHEEO/NCES Network Conference and IPEDS Workshop


• “Measuring Student Success: Promises and Pitfalls” at the Educational Writers Association Conference


• “Improving the Student Experience: Lessons from High Performing Institutions” at the 3rd EAIR-AIR Joint Seminar


• “Engaged Learning Communities: Students, Faculty, and Institutions” at the AAC&U Greater Expectations Institute