NSSE eNews is a periodic electronic newsletter created to keep NSSE users and others informed about current project activities.
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December 2015
Annual Results 2015 Released: Many Students Insufficiently Challenged
Using NSSE to Inform Campus Diversity Goals
New Service Offered: LMS & Student Portal Survey Links
New Recorded NSSE Webinar: Senior Transitions Topical Module
Research in Brief
Webinar Archive and Upcoming Webinars
Annual Results 2015 Released: Many Students Insufficiently Challenged
This year's Annual Results, Engagement Insights: Survey Findings on the Quality of Undergraduate Education, highlights various NSSE findings related to challenging coursework, seniors' preparation in the major, and the implications of financial stress. A BCSSE analysis also examined high school study habits and their relationship with the first year of college, while new FSSE results reveal faculty perceptions of safety and crisis preparedness. The following list is a brief summary of related findings:
- Only about half of first-year students and three in five seniors reported that their courses highly challenged them to do their best work.
- Coursework in the major that emphasizes creative skills was positively related to student engagement in several areas.
- Financial stress was common among undergraduates, particularly among first-generation, women, Black, and Hispanic students.
- Academic habits developed in high school, such as the amount of time devoted to studying, tend to carry over to college with lasting positive effects.
- Institutions where faculty felt safer provided more training about sexual assault, more resources for victims of sexual assault, and more crisis response training.
Compared with previous years' Annual Results, this year's report is more compact. We encourage participating institutions to consider what these results mean for their campus, and to use the report to stimulate research and data use activities on their campuses.
Using NSSE to Inform Campus Diversity Goals
The University of Northern Iowa (UNI), in Cedar Falls, IA, has participated in NSSE annually since 2006. The campus has shared their NSSE results in a number of ways, particularly related to realizing campus diversity goals. Results from the NSSE Engagement Indicator, Discussions with Diverse Others, are used to map progress on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as "Educate all students to ensure that they are prepared to live and work successfully in a diverse world." To track progress on this KPI, campus data were paired with results for the following NSSE items: During the current school year, how often have you had discussions with people from the following groups:
- from a race or ethnicity other than your own
- with religious beliefs other than your own
- with political views other than your own
The KPIs are posted on the campus website and on an interactive web page where faculty and staff are able to view KPIs, select progress benchmarks, and review data and progress. The results are also shared at the annual town hall meeting on diversity and inclusion, with results displayed at a booth for others to see. Read more about how UNI has used customized reporting to improve student engagement, and other exceptional data use examples, in Lessons from the Field — Volume 3: Using Data to Catalyze Change on Campus.
New Service Offered: LMS & Student Portal Survey Links
After two years of testing with the help of nearly thirty institutions, NSSE now offers institutions the opportunity to post survey links to their learning management system (LMS) and student portal pages. Students receive five email recruitment messages as usual, but also have the option to access NSSE through their campus systems. Designed as an alternative recruitment method, previous testing indicated that posting links can be helpful for boosting response rates on some campuses. Approximately 60 colleges and universities will post survey links this coming spring.
Click here to see approaches past institutions have used for posting survey links to their LMS or student portal.
For participating institutions that express interest during the fall prior to their spring administration, NSSE provides individualized survey links through its secure Institution Interface. NSSE campus project managers then work with their IT staff to post the links. Since NSSE has no particular implementation role besides providing the links, institutions must have the necessary technical skills to implement this on their own. However, to facilitate institutions helping other institutions, NSSE has developed a Wikispace so information can be easily shared, including relevant code for various platforms, such as Blackboard and Moodle.
Future NSSE participants are encouraged to investigate the viability of this recruitment method for their next administration.
New Recorded NSSE Webinar: Senior Transitions Topical Module
A recorded webinar focusing on NSSE's new Senior Transitions topical module is now available. The popularity of this module reflects participating institutions' strong interest in understanding student skill development and post-graduation plans. While this webinar is particularly relevant for institutions that administered the module in 2015, the findings it presents will be of interest to all NSSE users. After an introduction to the module, this 30-minute webinar provides an in-depth look at the module's content and aggregate findings along with suggestions for using this data on campus. For example, ideas for career advising and programming, and for curricular revisions in skill development, may arise from results showing that 1) graduating seniors have more confidence in their creative-thinking and problem-solving skills than in their financial and business/ entrepreneurial skills and 2) first-generation students are less likely than their non-first-generation peers to plan on attending graduate school.
View this webinar and its slides on the NSSE website.
Research in Brief
NSSE staff have been publishing and presenting various papers that inform our understanding of student engagement. In this eNews, we highlight work focusing on writing's relationship to learning and development, Hispanic-serving institutions, high-impact practices, and perceptions of mission engagement at religiously affiliated and independent institutions.
Study supports enhanced uses of writing in college—by itself, writing more is not the answer
This published study, a result of a collaboration between the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) and NSSE, identified and tested new variables for examining writing's relationship to learning and development. It identified three constructs derived from 27 effective writing practices established by CWPA members. In addition to the positive relationship to learning course material, results suggested that certain writing practices benefit college students on a personal and social development level.
Impact of the environment: How does attending a Hispanic-Serving Institution influence the engagement of baccalaureate-seeking Latina/o students?
This journal article examines how the Latina/o student experience differed between students who did and did not attend 4-year Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs). The results suggest that HSIs generally have positive, but modest, effects on Latina/o's student engagement and self-perceived gains.
Focus on the finish line: Does High-Impact Practice participation influence career plans and job attainment?
This ASHE conference paper explores whether high-impact practice (HIP) participation influences graduating seniors' plans for career and further education, and whether HIP participation has a positive impact on job attainment for these students. Results suggest that even after controlling for a variety of other demographic and institutional factors, HIP participation is a significant predictor of future career plans and attainment.
Are we who we claim to be? Perceptions of mission engagement among students and faculty at religiously affiliated and independent institutions
While the importance of institutional mission is acknowledged within the higher education community, there is a lack of empirical evidence investigating how missions are implemented. Using survey data from students and faculty, this ASHE conference paper investigates perceptions of mission engagement at religiously affiliated and independent institutions.
To see more NSSE research, visit our website.
Webinar Archive and Upcoming Webinars
NSSE provides webinars to guide faculty, administrators, and institutional researchers in the use of their NSSE, FSSE, and BCSSE data. Most webinars are hour-long, live, and interactive sessions that include a question-and-answer session. All webinars are recorded, and the more instructional webinars are prerecorded. These recordings along with the webinar handouts are posted in the NSSE Webinar Archive for over 65 webinars.
The webinars appeal to a variety of audiences and interests and can be viewed anytime. Search the archive's list of webinar topics by year or by keywords.
Announcements of upcoming webinars are emailed to all NSSE CPMs and posted on the webinar web page. Join us in January 2016 for "Adding Context to NSSE with FSSE," a webinar that will review how to use FSSE with NSSE results to compare student and faculty perspectives, to search for reasons for high or low student results, and to develop strategies to increase student engagement.