Using NSSE Data to Improve University Policy Reuben Ternes OIRA October, 2011

 OIRA ◦ Office of Institutional Research and Assessment ◦ We have lots of cool data about OU students. ◦ Our primary job is to conduct research about OU students, and to disseminate this information to the campus community. ◦ We’re also in charge of some assessment related activities. 

 We have two primary types of research ◦ 1) Surveys  Graduation Survey  Student Satisfaction Surveys  NSSE (Nessie)  CIRP ◦ 2) Internal Research  Do our need-based financial aid policies improve retention rates?  Should all students take 16 credits their first semester, regardless of their ACT score?  Do students that get AP credit for the first course in a sequence have just as much success as students that take the entire sequence here at OU?

 We also compile the university’s official statistics. ◦ Student Profiles (i.e., who are OU students?) ◦ Retention Rates ◦ Graduation Rates ◦ Progress to Degree ◦ Enrollment data ◦ Degree data ◦ Distribution of Grades  All of this information is available on our website: ◦

 Cooperative Institutional Research Project  The CIRP Survey asks students a whole bunch of questions.  Mostly about behaviors, attitudes, values, and expectations.  But also covers some demographic data.  The survey is taken just as students start (usually during orientation). ◦ Mostly, we find that we are more similar to other institutions than we are dissimilar.

 College student survey that assesses the extent to which students engage in educational practices associated with high levels of learning and development ◦ Administered every two years. ◦ OU has shown steady increases in NSSE results since 2005 ◦ More data is available on OIRA’s website.  All data is for 1 st year students unless otherwise noted. National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE: pronounced ‘nessie’)

11-15 Hours Per Week 6-10 Hours Per Week

Friendly & Supportive Unfriendly & unsupportive

 Full NSSE results are displayed on our website. ◦ It’s super fun to explore ◦ And it can help with various class projects.  For Example: Percentage of Students that Report Working more than 15 Hours Off-Campus per Week (2011 NSSE) ClassOUPeerNational Norm Freshmen25%21%16% Seniors58%45%37%

Percentage of Students that Report Working Zero Hours Off-Campus per Week (2011 NSSE) ClassOUPeerNational Norms Freshmen47%64%71% Seniors24%38%46%

 Periodically, OIRA releases some of its internal research, in a format that we call ‘Spotlight on OU.’ ◦ All of our Spotlights can be found online.  One of these Spotlights uses NSSE data to show the relationship between retention rate and the number of reported off-campus working hours for freshmen students.Spotlights  There are 4 main findings that I want to talk about today.

 Is there a relationship between first-year retention rates and off-campus working hours? ◦ Not really. Or, if there is, the impact is relatively small. ◦ (2007 & 2009 NSSE Data)

 Is there a relationship between off-campus working hours and the rate that students return with sophomore status?  Yes. ( χ 2 (7) = 14.7, p < 0.05) ◦ Students that work more hours do not appear to accumulate as many credits.

 Students that reported more working hours, also reported taking less credits during their first term. ◦ This isn’t really very surprising.

 What about GPA?  The report indicated that there did not appear to be a relationship between off-campus working hours and student GPAs. ◦ Unfortunately, I didn’t report that data, so I can’t really show it to you today.

 The main issue with students that work many hours, is that their progress towards graduation is significantly slower. ◦ Instead of taking 4 years, they take 6. ◦ Some research (both internal and external) suggests that accumulating credits too slowly may ultimately deter students from completing their degree.  It is difficult to know the life situations of all of our students, so, the question above might not be answerable. ◦ However, from a university perspective, we want to encourage students to complete as many credits as they can, each semester. ◦ Internal research also suggests that, when we set higher expectations, students tend to meet those expectations.