New survey to ask what students think of USU
The administration at Utah State University has decided it wants to hear what students have to say about their college experience by participating in the 2004 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).
According to the official NSSE Web site (http://www.indiana.edu/~nsse), the objective of the survey is to “provide an estimate of how undergraduates spend their time and what they gain from attending college.”
Paul Umbach, NSSE research analyst and project manager of the faculty survey of student engagement, said the survey allows institutions to get data from their students, to find out what their students are doing on campus and to make changes according to the data they receive.
The survey will be administered in the spring to students at participating institutions across the nation. According to the Web site, 725 colleges and universities have participated in the survey since its inception four years ago, and this spring, more than 400 are expected to be involved.
“We have got a huge chunk of higher education,” Umbach said.
According to the Web site, the results of the survey are used by college administrations to identify which aspects of the college experience, inside and outside the classroom, can be improved through changes in policies and practices.
“It says a lot about your campus, actually,” Umbach said. “It shows which institutions are trying to understand the experience of the students.”
This will be the second year USU has participated in the survey. The first time was in 2001.
This year not only will students at USU be taking the survey, but faculty members will also be participating in the new faculty version of the survey.
“It’s a whole new level of commitment,” said Umbach about USU’s participation in both versions of the survey. “There seems to be a real commitment to the students and to education.”
Umbach said the survey organizers would like to see institutions using the data they receive through the survey to devise ways to increase the time students spend with their professors and also to encourage more active and collaborative learning projects in the classroom. He said that in the past they have seen schools make changes in their curriculum and even in their programs based on information they received through the survey.
“That is what is exciting about the survey,” Umbach said. “It’s not one of those surveys that people will take the data and just put it up on a shelf. It’s very usable to make very good changes – positive changes for the students.”
The survey is run by a team based at Indiana University. According to the Web site, the NSSE survey started as a pilot test in 1999 involving approximately 70 institutions.
Last year the NSSE also ran a pilot test for the new faculty survey, Umbach said, which will help provide a new perspective to the data received from the student survey.
The survey will be administered in the spring to random samples of freshmen and seniors. Umbach said more than 1,000 USU students will be randomly selected to participate in the survey.
“I would encourage them to take the time to fill it out,” Umbach said. “The reason the administration has invested in this is because they want to hear what students think and what they are doing.”
-sjeppesen@cc.usu.edu