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National Survey of Student Engagement 2009

CU-Boulder administered the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) again in spring 2009 as part of its regular survey cycle. Preliminary results were provided by NSSE in August '09. These include results for a comparison group of 12 AAU public institutions:  Indiana-Bloomington, Iowa State, Texas A&M, Arizona, Texas-Austin, Maryland-College Park, Michigan-Ann Arbor, Minnesota-Twin Cities, Missouri-Columbia, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Oregon, and Washington-Seattle. The preliminary results (listed below) show campus-specific results for CU-Boulder and comparisons to these twelve other AAU schools combined.

Further information provided on this page includes details about the NSSE administration, including the population definition, the oversampling of seniors in particular departments, the questionnaire items, and the incentives that were offered to students to complete the survey. For more background on the history of CU-Boulder's participation in previous NSSE surveys, see the introduction of the 2006 NSSE survey posting.

Preliminary results (provided by NSSE) from the 2009 survey:

• The Student Experience in Brief - for CU-Boulder -- Developed by NSSE to "provide prospective students with insights into how they might learn and develop at a given college." This report highlights specific findings about CU-Boulder.
• Averages for individual items -- Overall means for CU-Boulder compared to AAU publics, for first-year students and seniors, and information on how to interpret the displays.
• Frequency distributions for individual items -- CU-Boulder compared to AAU publics, with information on how to interpret the displays.
• Student Comments -- Verbatim comments from CU-Boulder freshmen and seniors on the quality of their educational experience (password protected).
• Averages on NSSE scales of items, also called benchmarks -- CU-Boulder vs. AAU publics (Excel, with boxplot displays).
• Respondent Characteristics -- CU-Boulder vs. AAU Publics, includes response rates.

 Additional results for CU-Boulder will be posted soon.

Administration timeline:  NSSE staff members began sending email invitations in February 2009. Data collection ended in late April.

• Invitation: Monday, February 2, 2009
• Follow-up: Tuesday, February 10, 2009
• Reminder 1: Wednesday, February 18, 2009
• Reminder 2: Thursday, March 12, 2009
• Reminder 3: Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Population:  All new fall freshmen, plus everyone else classified as a freshman except transfer exchange students in fall 2008. All seniors. Fall graduating seniors were excluded in January when PBA gave a list of no-longer-enrolled students to NSSE.

Sample and oversample:  NSSE selected, from the population file PBA sent to them, 2,500 freshmen and 2,500 seniors. This is the "standard" sample. We requested that NSSE select about 500 additional seniors, over and above the standard sample, so that we can provide separate results for as many departments as possible. This sampling plan should give us adequate numbers of responding seniors to report results for about 45 departments.

• All students in sample received the full NSSE questionnaire. (PDF posted on NSSE site)
• A random half of the sample received AAU optional questions we've used for some time -- e.g., "Consider the size of the upper-division classes you've taken at this university -- have they generally been" -- far larger than you'd like, somewhat larger, OK in size, smaller than you'd like.
• All AAU optional questions: AAU Consortium Codebook (Excel posted on the NSSE site)
• Half received 27 questions organized by a national consortium of writing programs. E.g., how often students wrote assignments involving summarization, analysis, and argument.
• See all writing consortium questions at:
  http://comppile.org/wpa+nsse/docs/27_Question_Supplement.pdf
• In addition, due to some issues involving CU-Boulder's administration, NSSE administered the writing questions (plus the standard NSSE questions) to all remaining freshmen and seniors in the population who were not part of the original sample (approximately 4,800 students).

Incentives:  Respondents were entered into a drawing for four $1,000 cash awards, which were distributed in May. Three seniors and one freshman were the lucky recipients of the awards.

Last revision 09/23/09