NSSE E-News is a periodic electronic newsletter created to keep NSSE users and others informed about current project activities.
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Contents
NSSE & FSSE Registration Now Open
NSSE 2.0 Update
The 2011 Customized Major Field Report
Displaying NSSE Results
Assessment at the Program Level and NSSE
Psychometric Portfolio
NSSE Workshops & Webinars
NSSE and the VSA
Research in Brief
Research Analyst Staff Changes
BCSSE 2011 Registration Still Open
LSSSE Update
SNAAP Launches First National Administration
NSSE & FSSE Registration Now Open
Registration is now open for the 2012 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE). You may register for either survey at nsse.iub.edu or fsse.iub.edu. Registration closes on September 15, 2011. You should have received a packet of information in the mail already, including the 2012 Invitation to Participate brochure.
Please note that 2012 will be the last year of the current version of the NSSE survey; an updated survey will launch in 2013. Consider the implications of this transition and review your participation schedule and data needs, and contact us with any questions or concerns.
If you have questions about NSSE or FSSE, contact your Project Services team.
NSSE 2.0 Update
We have made significant progress with the development of NSSE 2.0 over the past several months. In addition to collecting data from over 21,000 first-year and senior students from a diverse set of 19 colleges and universities, cognitive interviews and focus groups were conducted at seven institutions in order to better understand how students interpret various survey items. Both sources of information will be used to prepare the second pilot to be administered in early 2012. Our goal is to finalize the list of participating institutions in the second pilot this October, so please let us know if you are interested.
We have also been busy the past several months talking with our users. For instance, several opportunities for institutions to provide input and ask questions about the survey update occurred at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research in Toronto this past May. Future opportunities include the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis this November.
Your feedback about the development of NSSE 2.0 is vital to the project’s success, so please contact us at nsse2013@indiana.edu.
2011 NSSE Institutions Customize their Major Field Report
To generate a more meaningful Major Field Report, 239 (31%) NSSE 2011 institutions opted to customize the major categories to match their profile of degrees offered. This new feature allows institutions to regroup the 85 student-reported majors into as many as eight new categories via an online form completed during the spring before Institutional Report delivery in August. Institutions choosing not to customize their major categories receive NSSE’s eight major field categories by default.
Displaying NSSE Results
If you’re looking for good examples and guidance on displaying your NSSE results on your institution Web site, see our online resources. We’re always looking for new examples to post so please volunteer your site for our featured displays.
In addition, check out the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment’s (NILOA) new Transparency Framework that provides an approach to thinking about how assessment initiatives like NSSE can be displayed on institution Web sites.
The Transparency Framework supports institutions that want to share evidence of student learning on- and off-campus. The Framework is based on a review of institutional Web sites and identifies six key components of student learning assessment. Institutions may use the Framework to examine their institutional Web sites to evaluate whether their evidence for student accomplishment is accessible, useful, and meaningful to their intended audience. Each section of the Framework suggests a component of student learning assessment that may be of interest to specific audiences and outlines opportunities to advance public understanding. To find complete details, see the NILOA Web site.
Assessment at the Program Level and NSSE
According to a recent report, Down and In: Assessment Practices at the Program Level, issued by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), assessment at the program level is primarily driven by faculty’s interest in improving their programs followed by programmatic accreditation. NSSE’s Major Field Report, first issued in 2009 and completely customizable in 2011, helps drive data down to the program level so that faculty can use NSSE results to examine engagement within programs, inform department-level improvements in teaching and learning, and use for programmatic accreditation. Learn more about the Major Field Report.
Psychometric Portfolio
Are you interested in information on the reliability and validity of NSSE? A great resource to check out in the “NSSE Findings” section of the Web site is the Psychometric Portfolio. The portfolio contains brief reports on NSSE’s evidence for validity, reliability, and other forms of data quality all in one central location. For those less familiar with psychometrics and measurement theory, there are also brief definitions for several concepts within the reliability and validity sections. An ongoing project for NSSE, the Psychometric Portfolio is updated periodically as new studies are completed.
NSSE Workshops & Webinars
Spring 2011 NSSE Users Workshop Held at the University of San Francisco
A NSSE Users Workshop was held from April 26-27, 2011, on the University of San Francisco campus. View highlights, the schedule, and presentations from the USF workshop as well as all past NSSE users workshops online.
Upcoming Workshops
A date has not yet been set for the next workshop, but we are currently exploring the potential for offering a variety of in-person workshop formats including an intensive, data analysis training, and topical workshops on aspects of educational practice and assessment to assist institutional teams in the development of action plans incorporating NSSE results. We would appreciate your input on workshop needs. Please send suggestions or comments to Jillian Kinzie, jikinzie@indiana.edu.
Webinar Viewing Continues to Increase
To date, close to 1600 participants have registered for Webinars from over 1,250 unique institutions in the US and Canada.
From 2008 to the present, archived Webinars were viewed over 4,538 times. These recordings continue to provide NSSE, BCSSE, and FSSE users with useful sessions that can be viewed at one’s convenience. Find a complete listing of all upcoming and recorded Webinars online.
Consider viewing these recent sessions:
- Engagement Readiness of First-Year Students first provides a brief introduction to BCSSE and then focuses on high school engagement as an important indicator of a student's preparedness to be meaningfully engaged on campus. It also reviews important steps an institution can take to facilitate meaningful engagement.
- Using NSSE Data in Student Affairs offers student affairs professionals ways to explore their NSSE results to gain valuable information about student experiences and suggestions for corroborating these trends with existing institutional data.
NSSE and the VSA
If your institution is participating in the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) check out the resources available on the NSSE Web site, including syntax to simplify recoding NSSE results for the College Portrait template. www.nsse.iub.edu/html/vsa.cfm
In addition, in a drive to increase traffic to institutional College Portrait pages, the VSA (Voluntary System of Accountability) recently mailed out over 16,000 promotional packets and new College Portrait posters to high school counselors across the country. Please see NSSE and the Voluntary System of Accountability page on our Web site to download a PDF of the poster from the VSA Web site, instructions on using NSSE items in the College Portrait, and a comprehensive list of VSA/NSSE resources.
Research in Brief
Investigating Social Desirability Bias in Student Self-Report Surveys
Worried that social desirability is having an unwanted influence on student responses to NSSE? A recent study looked at whether NSSE responses were correlated with a short social desirability scale. The results suggested that the majority of scores on NSSE have no significant relationship with a measure of social desirability.
Examining the Information Faculty Use When Making Changes to Courses
Most often faculty use direct student feedback or indirect feedback on student performance to inform their decisions about course changes. Other influences include disciplinary or pedagogical advances, institution- or department-level decisions, or collaborations with other faculty.
Using BCSSE and NSSE Data to Investigate College Readiness
Are new first-year students ready to be engaged on your campus? In a recent study using BCSSE-NSSE data, we found a good deal of behavioral consistency between high school and the first year of college. However, we also found that the campus environment has a positive, beneficial influence on student engagement. Understanding the past behaviors of your incoming first-year students can help you to better align programs that are beneficial to them.
Research Analyst Staff Changes
Ali Korkmaz and Julie Williams, long-time NSSE research analysts, are moving from Indiana to pursue other professional opportunities. We wish them the best and they will be greatly missed. We are also excited about several new additions to our analyst team:
Kevin Fosnacht earned his Ph.D. in February 2011 in Higher Education at UCLA where he also worked as a Graduate Student Researcher in the Institutional Research and Information Services office in the Graduate Division. Kevin’s interests include the impact of pre-college programs student debt, and graduate student attrition, and he brings many skills in advanced quantitative methods. Kevin will start July 18.
Heather Heager comes to NSSE from the University of Arizona where she earned her Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies and Practice in January 2011. Heather worked extensively with diverse student populations conducting both qualitative and quantitative research. Her dissertation focused on college access and success for students with learning disabilities. In addition to working on NSSE related projects, Heather will also work with the Law School Survey of Student Engagement. She started July 5.
Louis (Lou) Rocconi received his Ph.D. in Educational Research in December 2010 from the University of Memphis where his research focused primarily on methodological issues, student growth and development, and assessing learning community programs. Lou will start July 18.
BCSSE 2011 Registration Still Open
Registration for BCSSE, the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement, is going strong. As of late June, 109 institutions have already registered. During its first four years, more than 295,000 first-year students from 318 institutions participated in BCSSE.
Several resources exist for those who want to learn more about how to use their BCSSE data. BCSSE’s most recent Webinar, Engagement Readiness of First-Year Students, was recorded in April. Access this Webinar via our Webinar Archives.
BCSSE survey results have recently been presented at several national higher education conferences, including the Association for Institutional Research annual forum and the Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience. A full listing of papers and presentations can be found in the Publications and Presentations section of the NSSE Web site.
For more information about the project, visit our Web site at bcsse.iub.edu, email us at bcsse@indiana.edu, or call our toll free number: 866-435-6773. We would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
LSSSE Update
LSSSE completed its eighth national survey administration this spring with a record 95 participating law schools. More than 33,000 law students responded to the survey. In addition to the core survey instrument, this year’s students were asked about their interaction with international students in the law school classroom, and student initiative, a key component of professional training in legal education. Preliminary findings suggest that most law students have very little interaction with international students in their classes and that valuable opportunities to learn about legal education and law practice in our increasingly global society are currently being wasted. LSSSE will report further on these findings in its forthcoming 2011 Annual Survey Results.
In addition to several upcoming conference presentations on recent findings, LSSSE is continuing its efforts to make the data useful and accessible to law schools by hosting a series of regional users’ workshops for participating law schools. The next LSSSE workshop is scheduled for November 4, 2011, at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, NJ. For more information about this workshop, or to schedule a school consultation, please email lssse@indiana.edu.
Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) Launches First National Administration
After three successful field tests, SNAAP is now preparing for the first national administration. Institutions can register on-line at snaap.iub.edu through July 22, 2011.
Institutions register for SNAAP based on a desire to:
- Connect with their arts alumni in a new and meaningful way.
- Learn about their graduates’ experiences.
- Use data to make meaningful decisions about career services, alumni services, curriculum design, and more.
SNAAP’s first national report is enlivening the conversation about the value of an arts degree. Take a quick peek at a few of the many articles about SNAAP that have appeared in the last two months:
- Inside Higher Education: "The Myth of the Starving Artist" by Dan Barrett.
- Chronicle on Higher Education: "Arts-School Grads: Rich? Don't Count on it. Content? Quite Possibly!" by Carolyn Mooney.
- Huffington Post: "Uncle Henry Is Wrong. There's a Lot You Can Do With That Degree." by Steven J. Tepper.