Highlights of the NSSE:
- Gathers information about student participation in programs and activities offered by institutions; results indicate what students do with their time both in and out of class, as well as students’ perceptions of how their institution contributes to their knowledge, skill, and personal development
- Designed by researchers at Indiana University for four-year public and private institutions; consists of 30 questions (many of which have multiple parts)
- Usually given to random samples of first-year and senior year students to generate a picture of the collegiate experience from start to finish
- Looks at overall student engagement, which allows an alternative way of measuring institutional quality, as opposed to simply referring to the U.S. News & World Report rankings
- Results provide institutions with descriptive (rather than outcomes-based) data about level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student and faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environments; institutions receive information about their campus environment in particular, as well as how their institution compares with national and local colleges of similar type
Uses of the NSSE:
- Results provide faculty and administrators with an idea of how students view their college experience, thus informing change and improvement in campus culture, teaching, and learning
- Data might be used in campus-wide discussions to obtain feedback and to inform strategic planning
- Data might indicate discrepancies between commonly held perceptions of the campus experience and students’ reports of their experience, thereby guiding institutional reflection and change
- National comparison data allow faculty and administrators to evaluate how their campus compares to others by identifying organizational strengths and weaknesses that can guide improvement
- Demographic data included in the survey allow for examination of subpopulations within an institution (e.g., commuter, minority, or transfer students), which may inform policy or change regarding these groups
- High school students and their parents can view and compare institutional quality in a "new" way, defined by student engagement (as opposed to the U.S. News & World Report rankings)
Liberal Arts Outcomes and the NSSE:
- NSSE is an appropriate tool for looking at liberal arts educational practices because the survey is based on research delineating good practices in higher education that lead to positive learning outcomes; the NSSE examines qualities like academic effort, challenging coursework, supportive relationships, and faculty and peer interaction, among others
- Survey questions address many liberal arts outcomes to some extent; however, since NSSE is descriptive and not generally used to measure outcomes per se, investigators can garner a picture of students’ "liberal arts activities" but cannot actually measure the effectiveness of an educational practice on any particular liberal arts outcome
- NSSE is usually administered to large groups in order to assess the collective perceptions of students; therefore, NSSE aggregate data might suggest trends or patterns at an institution, but it cannot look at the degree to which individual students experience a collection of best practices and positive liberal arts outcomes
- It may indeed be possible to look at the overall institutional ethos of a campus (at least in part) by using the NSSE; student perceptions of the level of intellectual culture present on their campus could certainly be inferred by descriptions obtained through NSSE data; other, more qualitative, approaches should also be used however, to provide a more in-depth and rich representation of institutional philosophy
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