NSSE: National Survey of Student Engagement

There is often a gap between how much college faculty think students are studying and what they are actually doing. NSSE combined with FSSE points to steps institutions can take to ensure that student performance and faculty expectations align.

Carol A. Twigg, President and CEO, National Center for Academic Transformation

Volume 7, Issue 4
March 2008

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NSSE E-News is a bimonthly electronic newsletter created to keep NSSE users and others informed about current project activities.

Learn More about BCSSE - Free Webinar on April 8
New Web Resource
BCSSE 2008 Registration is Open
NSSE in the News
LSSSE Updates
Featured School
NSSE Institute Updates
BEAMS Update
NSSE Road Show
Spotlight on Student Awareness

Learn More about BCSSE - Free Webinar on April 8

Register for a Free Webinar to Learn More about BCSSE
On April 8, we will host a free Webinar to share details about BCSSE, including the purpose and content of the survey, administration and costs, various uses of the data and more. Information and registration about this Webinar can be found here.

New Web Resource

Encouraging Student Participation and Disseminating Survey Results
The NSSE Institute offers a new resource on our Web site showing examples of how other institutions are increasing response rates on the NSSE survey and how they disseminate results to internal and external audiences. NSSE Client Services collects examples from institutions to augment this section over time.

BCSSE 2008 Registration is Open

Early registration ends June 6. Click here to register for BCSSE 2008.

BCSSE 2007 was Successful
BCSSE was officially launched in 2007 after three years of extensive pilot testing. During the summer months of 2007, 126 institutions across the United States and Canada distributed the survey to more than 100,000 first-year college students. Additional facts about BCSSE 2007 institutions include:

Entering first-year class sizes ranged from 120 to over 7000.
Two-thirds used the paper version and one-third used the Web.
Approximately one-third are private/independent.
Most were either baccalaureate (35%) or master's institutions (44%).

NSSE in the News


ARTICLE	DATE	PUBLICATION
Inside Higher Ed NSSE data are referenced and NSSE Director Alex McCormick quoted in an article discussing student diversity in higher education.	March 2008
Diverse Issues In Higher Education Diverse Issues in Higher Education discusses some of the latest findings of and releases from the Building Engagement and Attainment for Minority Students (BEAMS) project.	March 2008
Inside Higher Ed Michael Bugeja, author of "Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age," discusses engagement in relation to technology use by today's students. He specifically discusses the NSSE and a few of the questions asked on the NSSE.	March 2008
MacLean's Canadian magazine MacLean's publishes a listing of the 2007 NSSE Benchmarks for most of the Canadian institutions that participated.	February 2008
MacLean's Canadian magazine MacLean's publishes and discusses NSSE results in relation to their own college and university rankings and evaluations.	February 2008
USA Today Research conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA confirms earlier findings by NSSE regarding the positive impact of parental involvement.	January 2008
Chronicle of Higher Education For the closing session of its annual meeting on Saturday, the Association of American Colleges and Universities brought together three prominent academic leaders to discuss how educators might make some of the organization’s lofty ideas for improving undergraduate education a reality...	January 2008
USA Today Jillian Kinzie, Associate Director at the Center for Postsecondary Research, is quoted in an article discussing professors' virtual office hours.	January 2008
Minot Daily News George Kuh, IU Chancellor's Professer and Director of the Center for Postsecondary Research, recently spoke at Minot State University. Topics Kuh discussed during his keynote included lessons Minot State should learn from the DEEP project and Minot State's NSSE results.	January 2008
AFT Speak Out George Kuh and Donald Pollock discuss the pros and cons of parental influence on their children's education.	January 2008

LSSSE Updates

The LSSSE 2008 survey is now live with 85 participating law schools. Over the next several weeks, we will contact approximately 60,000 law students across the country to invite them to participate in the LSSSE survey. Law schools participating in this year's administration or in past LSSSE administrations can learn more about how to put their results to use and translate the data to action at a West Coast Users' Workshop, scheduled for April 11, 2008 at Santa Clara University School of Law. Please visit the LSSSE Web site for more information about this and other upcoming events: http://lssse.iub.edu/index.cfm

Featured School

University of Central Florida
In the summer of 2005, the University of Central Florida (UCF) commissioned several faculty task forces to analyze results of their 2004 and 2005 administrations of the National Survey of Student Engagement. The task forces examined four broad areas of numeracy, collaboration and support, writing across the disciplines, and academic rigor. Their in-depth analyses yielded evidence and support for the implementation of new policies and practices aimed at increasing undergraduate engagement. Consequently, ten campus-wide initiatives were launched to enhance faculty-student interactions, civic engagement, use of technology throughout the curriculum, and student involvement and commitment to the university.

In collaboration with the campus Academic Rigor sub-committee, Faculty Center for Teaching, and Division of Student Development and Enrollment Services, the UCF Experience Task Force and Provost established an Office of Undergraduate Research; expanded support for the institutional partnership with Junior Achievement; adopted Information Fluency (IF) as the institutional Quality Enhancement Plan; and established a Sophomore Success Center in the Spring of 2007. As a result, in the 2006-2007 academic year, UCF was the 6th largest Junior Achievement program in the nation with the participation of 1,000 students in their academic-based service-learning program. The university has quickly become a leader in the IF movement with demonstrable learning increases among their students in the area of information literacy, and each of their other initiatives continues to expand with the allocation resources and wide institutional support. NSSE is pleased to have been a driving force for institutional change and improvement in UCF's undergraduate programs.

NSSE Institute Updates

NSSE Webinar Series Continues Focus on Institutional Assessment and Planning
The first "Tuesdays with NSSE" Webinar, "Assessing the First-Year Experience," was presented by Jillian Kinzie on March 4. The session covered principles of good practice for the first year; using NSSE, BCSSE, and FSSE to assess first-year programs; and using NSSE and BCSSE for accreditation. A recording of the Webinar is available for viewing at your convenience here.

Upcoming Webinar topics include using NSSE data in student affairs, multi-year use of NSSE data, an introduction to the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE), and using your Institutional Report data. Please check the NSSE Web site for a complete listing and schedule of future Webinars.

New Spanish Pocket Guide
As part of an ongoing public awareness campaign on quality in the college experience, NSSE provides high school guidance and undergraduate admissions offices with A Pocket Guide to Choosing a College at no or low cost. To support the college search process of the growing Spanish-speaking Hispanic/Latino community, the NSSE Pocket Guide has recently been translated into Spanish by Translations for Success (Traducciones Exitosas). Mirroring its English language counterpart, the new pocket guide, "Una Guia de Bolsillo Para Escoger una Universidad," contains questions to ask when visiting a college campus. College admissions offices and non-profit education organizations may request up to 300 copies of the English version and 100 copies of the Spanish version of the pocket guide free of charge per year - more information and an online request form are available on the NSSE Web site here. We encourage you to pass this information on to your colleagues in admissions, student affairs, and orientation.

Fall 2008 Regional Workshop to be held at SUNY Brockport
Please join us for the Fall 2008 Regional NSSE Users Workshop hosted by NSSE and the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Brockport. Sessions will be held on the SUNY Brockport campus and at the Metro Center in Rochester, NY. We encourage interested colleges and universities to send teams to the one-and-a-half-day workshop scheduled for Thursday and Friday, October 16-17, 2008. Details on registration, session proposal submissions, a tentative schedule, hotel accommodations, and travel information will be available soon on the NSSE Web site at http://nsse.iub.edu/institute/.

Specialized Accreditation Toolkits to Be Available Soon!
The NSSE Institute is conducting its final review of seven new toolkits to assist institutions preparing self-studies for specialized accreditation. The recently completed toolkits align NSSE survey items with professional standards for specialized program accreditation and include: ABET standards on computer science, information systems, engineering, and applied science; Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) standards on accounting and business; and National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standards for teacher education. The toolkits will be available for download from the NSSE Web site in late spring.

BEAMS Update

Building Engagement and Attainment for Minority Students (BEAMS)
During 2003-07, the Building Engagement and Attainment for Minority Students (BEAMS) project fostered evidence-based campus change initiatives using NSSE results at more than 100 four-year Minority Serving Institutions. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) is hosting a series of regional events to disseminate the BEAMS findings and promote the forthcoming release of the monograph. Each event will highlight the BEAMS project's key findings and lessons learned, and feature a panel of experts who are eager to share their knowledge of proven engagement initiatives. If you are interested in attending one of the events, which are listed below, please RSVP to Melissa Del Rios, IHEP program manager, at mdelrios@ihep.org.

March 28 - 11:00AM-1:00PM: Spelman College (Atlanta, GA)
April 1 - Noon-2:00PM: University of Puerto Rico - Humacao (Humacao, PR)
April 4 - 9:30 AM: University of the Incarnate Word (San Antonio, TX)

NSSE Road Show

	March-April 2008
Mar. 29 - Apr. 2	American College Personnel Association (ACPA) Annual Convention	Atlanta, GA
	May 2008
May 24 - 28	Association for Institutional Research (AIR)	Seattle, WA
	June 2008
June 18 - 21	Assessment Institute - American College Personnel Association	Indianapolis, IN
Jun 18-21	Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE)	Windsor, Ontario, CAN

Spotlight on Campus Awareness

Northern Kentucky University
How well an institution conducts its marketing campaign can significantly impact the quality of the data and how results translate into institutional improvement. Thus, developing effective marketing strategies are essential to the success of a survey administration. Northern Kentucky University (NKU) offers an exemplary model for engaging and garnering student support for participation in the NSSE. In their recent survey administration, NKU engaged in a multifaceted campaign that included a partnership with First-year Program Coordinators and student based organizations. Their marketing and promotional efforts resulted in a substantial increase in their response rate from that of their previous administration.

Their campaign highlighted the value of participation in over-sized "Got NSSE?" flyers posted throughout the campus. Flyers with a "Got Nano?" slogan which mimicked the "Got NSSE?" flyer were also posted in areas frequented by students. Additional flyers and signs calling for freshman and senior participation were draped along display tables where baskets of miniature Nestle bars were available for student consumption, and where laptops were provided for students to check their NKU email for the NSSE invitation. Smaller flyers with Nestle bars attached were circulated throughout the food court to encourage maximum participation.

With each round of e-mail reminders from NSSE, a new round of flyers and table displays were posted and assembled. Organizers noted that with each new round there was a marked increase in responses for days after each campaign. A review of their response rate revealed that a nearly even number of students from each class participated, 736 first-year and 761 senior students. Congratulations on a successful collaborative effort to build a culture of assessment!

To assist institutions with raising awareness on campus, NSSE is now offering a new online resource. This new tool provides handy templates for creating NSSE marketing materials. We encourage institutions to utilize the site for innovative ideas in developing customized promotional materials. The site is available here.