The University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with the University of Wisconsin System, is gearing up for the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), inviting students to share thoughts on their undergraduate experiences. Freshmen and seniors began to receive emails on Wednesday with an invitation to the survey, providing feedback intended to help improve the university.
Over 6.5 million students across 1,700 institutions have taken the survey since its start in 2000. Headquartered and founded at Indiana University’s School of Education, NSSE provides its institutions with reports and comparisons that allow them to measure how their students compare to those at similar institutions.
“[The NSSE asks] really well researched questions about pieces of the student experience. Some of that is participation in high impact practices — research or study abroad, things about your academic experience,” said Sara Lazenby, an institutional policy analyst for UW-Madison’s Data, Academic Planning and Institutional Research office (DAPIR). “With a survey that hundreds of institutions are participating in, we not only get our results, but we get the results of other universities across the country.”
Participating institutions pay upwards of $8,460 for access to the survey. The NSSE received its initial financial support from the Pew Charitable Trusts in 1998 and has been a staple of college surveys ever since. In 2013, the NSSE was revised to introduce and improve metrics, increase comprehensibility and modernize the terminology used.
The survey gathers data across five categories — engagement in purposeful educational activities, institutional academic requirements, attitudes towards the campus atmosphere, estimates of personal growth, and personal background and demographic details.
“[NSSE provides] a really nice set of longitudinal data that lets us look at comparison over time on particular questions,” said Lazenby.
DAPIR, a recently-announced fusion between UW-Madison’s Academic Planning and Institutional Research (APIR) and the Office of Data Management and Analytics Services (ODMAS), has taken the lead on administering NSSE.
“We provide institutional support for NSSE ... working with them to identify the populations of students that should get the survey and working with [the Institutional Review Board] to get permissions to make sure that we're in compliance with research protocols,” explained Lazenby. “Then we work with on-campus units like university marketing and communications to come up with the promotional materials for NSSE that are encouraging students to respond.”
Promotional materials for NSSE can be found around campus, notably in dining halls.
The university has elected to take the survey every three years since 2001. In 2020, the response rate was significantly lower than in previous years, with only 9% of respondents compared to 29% in 2017 and 23% in 2014.
“In years where we've had higher response rates, we've had more ability to [provide departmental reports],” said Lazenby. “In years that we have had low response rate — 2020, when NSSE was in the field as the pandemic shutdown happened, that really limited our ability to do some of those more custom reports.”
Feedback from 2020’s survey was generally positive. According to the survey, 89% of seniors rated their UW-Madison experience as good or excellent, 88% would attend UW-Madison again and 91% rated the academic quality as good or excellent, significantly higher than peer institutions. Additionally, students reported higher quality interactions with academic advisors, faculty, student services staff, administrative staff and other students compared to other institutions.
The survey also showed that UW-Madison students scored high on four areas laid out in the ‘Wisconsin Experience’ — intellectual confidence, empathy and humility, relentless curiosity and purposeful action.
DAPIR and the NSSE will analyze the results as the survey closes on May 14, creating some of these custom reports upon request.
“Once the survey is closed, NSSE provides us with an initial round of that data summary that eventually gets posted on our website,” said Lazenby. “We also work to write several shorter reports that try and condense some of that — NSSE has many questions, and so we write shorter reports to condense that information down into more digestible pieces to help us then understand different areas of the university.”
Lazenby also noted feedback from the survey has helped to identify specific areas of improvement for the school.
“[At one point,] we noticed that our responses on questions about advising were less positive than some of our peer institutions. And that eventually led to the creation of the Office of Undergraduate Advising as well as some other investments to add additional academic advisors across campus in an effort to improve that student experience with academic advising,” said Lazenby.
DAPIR aims to increase their response rate by sending email reminders to students who haven't finished the survey yet. Additionally, students who finish the survey before April 15 will be automatically entered into a raffle to win one of 50 Amazon gift cards worth $25 each.
“It's always nice when we do get students to respond. It helps us improve the university. It helps us have the data to know what the students feel about their experience,” said Lazenby. “Really, we do take the responses of students to NSSE really seriously and act to improve on that.”
Jasper Bernstein is news manager for The Daily Cardinal. He previously served as the associate news editor, covering city, campus and breaking news. Follow him on Twitter at @jasperberns.
