The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) aims to provide institutions with an understanding of "how undergraduates spend their time and what they gain from attending college." In October 2009 a group of college presidents, NSSE program leaders, and assessment experts gathered to discuss the widely used instrument ten years after its inception. The group agreed the NSSE collects valuable data regarding student behavior and student learning. The Wabash Study of Liberal Arts Education offered evidence confirming the validity of the instrument's findings. However, despite the positive support, there was concern that institutions are not utilizing NSSE results. In EDUC 721, I believe we have referred to this element of assessment as "closing the loop".
The theoretical side of me believes that there isn't any point to collecting data unless it is analyzed and then utilized to implement institutional improvements. However, the practical side of me, the one that recently received a 200+ page report from Concordia's participation in a national study, the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership (MSL), understands the reality of this situation.
For the majority of us with careers in higher education, getting everything done in a day is a challenge in itself. We have multiple demands on what never seems like enough time in the day, the week, the year, etc... Some of us may be fortunate enough to have access to an institutional research and assessment office who will take on this project. But for the rest of us, finding time to analyze data all too often takes a back seat to the multiple deadlines and frequent "fires" that our daily work life entails. Implementing changes suggested by data, even if it is great data, is not something that we do not want to do, but something that we simply do not have time to do.
In the October discussion mentioned earlier by this esteemed group of colleagues, they "joked about how they would like to require colleges that participate (in the NSSE) to file reports on what they actually do with the data, and that they be required to do something." Perhaps some of us would benefit from a deadline to help us prioritize data analysis and utilization into our already busy lives, but shouldn't it be up to us to discern creative methods of holding ourselves accountable to utilizing the data? After all, without "closing the loop" in this manner, we have wasted the time, energy, and funding spent to participate in national studies such as the NSSE. I believe the solutions are out there, we just have to find and utilize them. After all, data is simply data, unless we take the time to put it to use.
National Survey of Student involvement: http://nsse.iub.edu/html/about.cfm
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