Students, Take This Survey, Get Convenience Points
Current freshmen and seniors are asked to participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement by May 4 in an effort to help Boston University gain deeper insight into students’ experiences on campus. Photo by Janice Checchio
Students, Take This Survey, Get Convenience Points
Freshmen, seniors encouraged to take National Survey of Student Engagement
Have you met Nessie?
Not the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie is also the nickname of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a study of learning and the campus environment that helps Boston University assess how it’s doing in the eyes of its student body.
First-year students and seniors are asked to participate in the study conducted by the Indiana University School of Education. If you’re in one of those class levels, you should have gotten more than one email from BU encouraging you to take the study and offering a direct, personalized link. And those who participate get a reward of $5 in convenience points on their Terrier card as an incentive.
“Student voices matter, and the NSSE survey is an important way for students to give us insight into their experiences on our campus,” says Christine McGuire, vice president and associate provost for enrollment and student administration.
Students are asked a variety of questions about classwork, interactions on campus, and BU’s learning environment. This year, there are two additional modules: one on inclusiveness and engagement with cultural diversity, and the other on first-year experiences or senior transitions. With those last two, your personalized link will take you to the survey with the module that matches your situation.
The University hopes students will complete the survey by the last day of classes, Wednesday, May 4.
“From previous surveys, we learned that during their time at BU, many students had engaged in rich educational experiences, like conducting research with faculty and completing internships or service learning projects,” says Amie Grills, associate provost for undergraduate affairs. “Creating even more access to opportunities like these and building new occasions for students to even further engage with our outstanding faculty is a priority for the Office of Undergraduate Affairs, so the NSSE survey data is a highly valuable metric for us.”
More than 600 colleges and universities regularly participate in the survey, which is distributed annually. BU participates only every other year to allow time for assessing the results and taking action in response. For example, students’ feedback in 2016 helped guide BU officials in developing the Hub, the University-wide general education curriculum put in place in 2018. NSSE results have also provided important outcomes data during the University’s reaccreditation process.
The survey was last conducted at BU in 2020, and it overlapped with the start of the pandemic, but participation was similar to that of 2018, according to Denise Mooney, associate vice president for enrollment and student administration. Some 41 percent of the total population of first-years and seniors took the survey in 2020, roughly double the average for similar institutions. This year’s numbers are tracking 2020 closely, too, Mooney says.
“The University wants the student experience to be outstanding,” McGuire says. “This survey gives us an important report card to measure our progress toward that goal.”
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