URSSA is an online survey instrument for use in evaluating student outcomes of undergraduate research experiences in the sciences. The URSSA survey items have been thoroughly tested and URSSA is now available for returning and new users!
Biology REU PIs only: instructions on how to use the Biology Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) common URSSA assessment tool.
The URSSA is currently housed on the salgsite.org web platform designed for the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) instrument. This platform provides online tools that enable you to customize and administer the instrument and gather anonymous responses from your students. Through the platform’s database tools, survey results are available in both summarized and spreadsheet formats.
Since the salgsite web platform was originally designed for the SALG instrument, the website language is oriented toward classroom assessments, but URSSA can be administered from it. Commands and information that reference the SALG are also applicable to URSSA. The salgsite platform is still under development, and we hope to offer a more direct link to URSSA in the future.
In the meantime, please save this document regarding directions for preparing and administering URSSA. The directions will help you navigate to the URSSA instrument and set up your own version of URSSA using the salgsite “wizard” tool.
For background on the URSSA instrument, please see our other publications on assessing undergraduate research.
Acknowledgements
The URSSA team comes from the University of Colorado at Boulder and includes Anne-Barrie Hunter, Tim Weston, Heather Thiry and Sandra Laursen. We thank the SALG team and all the students, faculty, and program directors who helped us test and refine URSSA.
Development and testing of URSSA has been supported by the National Science Foundation through its Divisions of Chemistry and Undergraduate Education, the Biological Sciences Directorate, and the Office of Multidisciplinary Affairs, under grant #CHE-0548488.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations are those of the researchers and do not necessarily represent the official views, opinions, or policy of the National Science Foundation.
Additional support has been provided by the Biological Sciences Initiative and the NIH Scholars program, both at CU Boulder, through their grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health.