Teaching Connection #117

What is NSSE?

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is a standardized survey tool used to assess the extent to which students engage in educational practices associated with high levels of learning and development. Miami last administered NSSE in Spring 2023 and will administer NSSE every three years moving forward, maximizing the overlap between those surveyed as first-year students in one administration and those who should be surveyed again as seniors in the next administration.  The results provide an estimate of how undergraduates spend their time and what they gain from attending college. Data from Miami students are compared to data from students at institutions from comparison groups such as institutions with the same Carnegie classification as Miami and public institutions in the Great Lakes region of the United States. 

Key Findings Relating to Seniors’ Experiences

As part of our assessment for the Miami Plan, we reviewed the survey questions administered to graduating seniors and mapped those to the four pillars of the Miami Plan: collaboration & innovation, communication & expression, critical & integrative thinking, and civic mindedness & social engagement.  

Note: This survey was administered in 2023 before the new Miami Plan was implemented.  These data as a baseline for future comparison and analysis. 

Miami seniors’ perceptions of their experiences are statistically higher than seniors at comparable public institutions in the following areas:

• Asking another student to help you understand course material
• Explaining course material to one or more students
• Preparing for exams by discussing or working through course material with other students
• Working with other students on course projects or assignments
• Working with a faculty member on activities other than coursework (committees, student groups, etc.)
• Discussing course topics, ideas, or concepts with a faculty member outside of class
• Discussed your academic performance with a faculty member

• Giving course presentation

• Evaluating a point of view, decision or information source
• Forming a new idea or understanding from various pieces of information
• Used numerical information to examine a real-world problem or issue
• Evaluated what others have concluded from numerical information

Areas where Miami students’ perceptions of learning were lower than students at institutions in one of the aforementioned comparison groups: 

• Developing or clarifying a personal code of values or ethics
• Understanding people of other backgrounds (economic, racial/ethnic, political, religious, nationality, etc.)

• Overall level of challenge in courses

Conclusion

The 2023 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), shows that Miami University students are significantly more likely to: engage in higher-order learning, reflective learning, and quantitative reasoning; evaluate conclusions from numerical data; write more and more frequently; complete an independent senior thesis; discuss ideas with diverse groups; have rewarding interactions with faculty; work with other students on projects or assignments; and take courses requiring them to form new ideas. These core elements of liberal arts education are important reasons why Miami students also overwhelmingly rate the quality of their educational experience as good or excellent.

However, it also points to areas for improvement.  We need to find ways to increase the level of rigor and challenge in our upper level courses, including the Senior Capstone, and we need to explore ways of promoting deeper ethical reasoning across the curriculum.

December 2024