| Student engagement surveys distributed BY MIKE UNGER Tomorrow morning AU’s freshmen and seniors will wake up to find an important message in their in-boxes, and AU administrators are urging them to hit “open” rather than “delete.” The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) measures just what college students truly believe about their universities, information that is considered vital by AU’s academic leaders. Beginning tomorrow, AU’s first- and final-year undergraduates will have the opportunity to complete the survey online. “We strongly encourage students to respond because the information we get from the survey is so valuable in terms of understanding our strengths and what we can do better,” said Karen Froslid Jones, AU’s director of institutional research and assessment. “It gets us information that isn’t available in any other way.” The NSSE, which is administered at Indiana University at Bloomington, was created in 1998 and originally funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. It conducted its first survey in 2000. Colleges and universities pay to participate in the biannual survey, which covers students’ attitudes on the level of academic challenge, the availability of enriching academic experiences (such as studying abroad), participation in co-curricular activities, the level of university support, and active and collaborative learning possibilities. “This kind of information is very different than something like U.S. News,” Froslid Jones said. “The U.S. News rankings look at inputs, like the average SAT score and the [admittance] rates, but those things tell a student nothing about the things that should be happening at a university or college.” AU has been particularly pleased with its student response rates in the past. In 2004, 933 freshmen and 928 seniors were offered the chance to take part. The response rate of 37 percent was 10 points higher than in 2002 and above average among the 42 doctoral-extensive institutions, with which AU compares itself. The students who took the 15 minutes or so to answer the survey generally seemed pleased with their academic experiences. AU’s scores improved from 2002 in virtually every one of the five benchmark categories. Both AU’s seniors and freshmen appeared to be sufficiently academically challenged, which is measured by, among other things, the amount of time they must spend preparing for class and the amount of work assigned by professors. Freshmen put AU in the top 5 percent of doctoral institutions in the category, while AU received the top score among its 42 competitors for seniors. In active and collaborative learning, which includes working with other students on group projects and discussing ideas outside of a classroom setting, both freshmen and seniors placed AU in the top 20 percent of doctoral institutions. Seniors gave AU the top score in student-faculty interaction, which measures such things as prompt feedback from teachers and work with faculty on a research project outside of course requirements. AU ranked in the top 10 percent in this category among freshmen. AU’s greatest success came in the enriching educational experiences category, which is designed to measure such programs as internships and community service. Among both freshmen and seniors, AU received the top score for doctoral institutions and ranked in the top 5 percent of all 472 institutions that participated in the survey. Froslid Jones hopes that AU will fare just as well—if not better—when the results of this year’s survey are publicized in late fall. “We’re careful not to necessarily think of it as simply a marketing tool,” she said. “It’s really a way for us to benchmark ourselves.” |
