National Survey of Student Engagement

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) surveys undergraduate students at four-year colleges and universities to determine the extent to which students engage in a variety of good educational practices.  ENMU participated in NSSE 2001, the first year of NSSE following its pilot project years, and will participate in NSSE 2002.

The sample used by NSSE is comprised of 177,103 first-year and senior students randomly selected from data files provided by 321 participating schools.  The sample size from each school was determined by the number of its undergraduate students.

The NSSE 2001 Overview gives a complete description of the 2001 national survey and is available on-line at http://www.indiana.edu/~nsse/.  The overview provides complete information about the upcoming 2002 survey and links to interesting articles about the uses of the survey and how other colleges and universities have used this data to improve the quality of education at their respective schools.  College activities, course emphasis, and educational programs are ways that NSSE uses to gain insights pertaining to student experiences at their perspective educational institutions.

Among the forms in which NSSE provides this information is an MS Excel format that can be easily e-mailed to interested parties so they can make comparisons on issues pertaining to their fields of education and areas of control.  Interested ENMU faculty and staff may e-mail the Assessment Resource Office, and the data will be sent to them by return e-mail.  The involvement and feedback of professional, staff, and academic members of the ENMU family would be helpful to fully realize the potential of the data obtained from the NSSE survey.

The NSSE survey is comprised of eleven different areas of data pertaining to the educational experiences of students.  An example of the actual survey can be seen at the following website: http://www.collegereport.org/NSSEDemo.htm.

The topics of the survey are:

• Academic, Intellectual, and Social Experiences
• Mental Activities
• Reading and Writing
• Challenge of Examinations
• Quality of Advising
• Enriching Educational Experiences
• Time Usage
• Institutional Emphases
• Quality of Relationships
• Satisfaction
• Educational and Personal Growth

The two areas we will look at in this edition of the Datawave are Mental Activities and Satisfaction.

 

The NSSE survey asked students to respond to various areas of student engagement. These areas resemble the scale of higher order thinking skills from the well-known taxonomy of Benjamin Bloom. The descriptions of the variables used in Mental Activities are listed below

Memorizing facts, ideas, or methods from your courses and readings so that they can be repeated in pretty much the same order.

Analyzing the basic elements of an idea, experience, or theory such as examining a particular case or situation in depth and considering its components.

Synthesizing Ideas, and organizing ideas, information, or experiences into new, more complex interpretations and relationships.

Evaluating Information by making judgments about the value of information, arguments, or methods such as examining how others gathered and interpreted data and assessing the soundness of their conclusions.

Applying Theories or concepts to practical problems or in new situations.

This chart displays the results comparing ENMU Seniors to 1st year students using score values of:

1=	Very little
2=	Some
3=	Quite a bit
4=	Very much

That chart confirms some “traditional” expectations about the practices of seniors as compared to freshmen students.

The next chart compares freshmen students of ENMU to the NSSE survey.

The freshmen at ENMU responded more favorably to memorizing, synthesizing ideas, and evaluating information, but less favorably to analyzing and applying theories than their NSSE counterparts.

The next chart compares ENMU’s senior other NSSE seniors.

The Standard Deviation showing how well the ENMU mean matches the NSSE mean is shown in the next two charts.  Standard deviation is a measure of the average amount the individual scores deviate from the mean of all the scores in the distribution.

This chart compares the senior students standard deviation for the NSSE average.

This chart shows the 1st year student responses to the 1st year student NSSE average.

The next area addresses student responses to the questions:

If you could start over again, would you go to the same institution you are now attending?  The responses were scored:

1=	Definitely no
2=	Probably no
3=	Probably yes
4=	Definitely yes

How would you evaluate your educational experience at your university?  The response were scored:

1=	Poor
2=	Fair
3=	Good
4=	Excellent

Editorially Speaking:  NSSE and Eastern

By:  Larry N Smith

 As readers will see in this and future editions of the DATAWave, the aggregate results of ENMU students' responses to the NSSE have some comforting features.  It is reassuring to see that statistically we fall within the national mean, and on the "high side" of the mean, in most of the good educational practices the NSSE measures.  It is also nice to note that the learning gains from 1^st to 4^th year are reflected in the “higher order” mental skills of analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and application.  It should be understood, however, that those of us who coordinate assessment efforts at Eastern are hesitant to hang our hats on the validity of Eastern's results for this first "non-pilot" year of the NSSE.  We have confidence in the soundness of the NSSE administration with regard to the sample of 400 Eastern students who were asked to respond; but the number of ENMU responses (which ranged in the mid-60's depending on the question) was small enough that we should not take too much comfort.

Our view of the value of the NSSE has much to do with it being a national, longitudinal study of what we think are important questions about higher education practices.  We believe it is important that Eastern make its contribution to that study, because it emphasizes the things we at Eastern think are important.  We are hopeful, as are those who developed and promoted it, that over time the NSSE will serve to educate the general public as to what are good and important higher education practices and which institutions take those practices seriously.

Eastern, which must compete for students against the "big name" institutions, can benefit from the information the NSSE is designed to develop and disseminate.  In order to reap such benefits, of course, we must continue our current good practices in teaching and learning…and improve and enhance those practices.

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