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Highlights from the 2009 TCNJ NSSE |
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Benchmarks
To focus discussions about the importance of student engagement and guide institutional improvement efforts, NSSE created five clusters, or "benchmarks" of effective education practice listed below. Clicking on each benchmark below will bring you to a page with additional data and information about that benchmark. Results are presented as a comparison to our Carnegie Peers, a group of schools considered comparable to TCNJ in scope and size. At TCNJ 40% of the Freshmen in 2009 voluntarily participated in the web-based NSSE, and 38% of the Seniors. This compares to a national response rate of 36% overall.
- Level of academic challenge
- Active and collaborative learning
- Student-faculty interaction
- Enriching educational experiences
- Supportive campus environment
More detailed information about the NSSE benchmarks can be found on the NSSE Web site at http://nsse.iub.edu/pdf/nsse_benchmarks.pdf.
Survey Administration
An invitation to participate in the web-based survey instrument for NSSE was emailed to all freshmen (1,522) and seniors (1,351) registered for classes in the Spring 2009 semester. Four reminders were emailed to students who had not initiated the survey by the time of the reminder. TCNJ had an overall response rate of 39% (comparable to the national average of 36%), with 616 freshmen (40%) and 508 seniors (38%) responding.
BCSSE - Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement
The Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) was administered for the first time in Fall 2008 to incoming first year students during Welcome Week, and 1,036 students responded. We used the data from the BCSSE to create advising reports for these students to help them identify pitfalls and opportunities for academic success at TCNJ.
A total of 416 first year students who responded to the BCSSE also responded to NSSE. Using this matched data, TCNJ faculty and staff are invited to join a group more closely examining the expectation of our first year students. We are also going to analyze the relationships between incoming student characteristics and their reported engagement at the end of their first year.
The BSCCE Survey Instrument is available here.
FSSE - Faculty Survey of Student Engagement
The Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) was also administered at TCNJ for the first time in the 2008-09 academic year. FSSE is designed to complement the NSSE, and measures faculty members’ expectations of student engagement in education practices that are empirically linked with high levels of learning and development. All full-time faculty members were sent invitation emails and asked to respond to the online survey during the Spring 2009 semester, asking them to answer the questions in light of a typical TCNJ student. TCNJ had a faculty response rate of 47%, with 167 faculty responding. Sixty identified themselves as teaching mostly first-year students, 84 as teaching mostly seniors, 19 teaching other students, and 4 did not respond to this question.
TCNJ faculty and staff are invited to join a group more closely examining the expectation faculty have for the engagement of students at TCNJ. We are also going to analyze the relationships between the faculty perception of the typical student and the responses provided by TCNJ students on NSSE.
The FSSE Survey Instrument is available here.
<<Back to TCNJ NSSE Reports page
