NSSE Data-Informed HIP Planning and Accreditation Reporting (Lessons from the Field–Volume 4)
California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) is a Hispanic-Serving Institution that is focused on the students they serve, an undergraduate population among whom 42% identify as Latino/a, 54% are first-generation, and 47% come from low-income backgrounds. Institutional researchers at CSUSM use NSSE data to learn more about their student population and to provide evidence that can be used to best serve them—for example, to confirm that CSUSM students spend more hours working for pay than do students at similar institutions. Findings like this inform the collective understanding of the student population and guide campus conversations on how to best support these students.
NSSE data are also used to underpin efforts like the benchmarking of Co-Curricular Competencies conducted annually by the Division of Student Affairs. The division reorganizes data from NSSE and from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) College Senior Survey under domains such as Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility or Critical Thinking and Ethical Reasoning, using the data to inform conversations regarding student learning in these areas.
High-Impact Practices (HIPs) such as the first-year seminar, internships, and undergraduate research are a leading priority at CSUSM. Emblematic of this institutional emphasis, a HIP task force composed of faculty, staff, and administrators with interest or involvement in campus HIPs used NSSE data to disaggregate student participation in these practices by student major and demographic characteristics. These data can help educators identify student groups that are less likely to participate in HIPs and to direct them to HIP opportunities—interventions that are especially impactful for students such as first-generation or low-income students who might not otherwise seek out these opportunities.
CSUSM stakeholders have used NSSE data to measure the overall effect of efforts to improve HIP participation, and the data suggest interventions like these are working. Encouragingly, results from the institution’s NSSE 2016 administration indicated that HIP participation has increased. Also, using common data reference points has facilitated cross-division collaboration at the university, as all entities work from the same data points and share a common framework for conversations to identify needs and plan interventions.
NSSE data have also played an important role in the CSUSM WASC Senior College and University Commission (WASC) accreditation process—providing evidence in their institutional report of achievements in university-wide Undergraduate Learning Outcomes (ULOs), mapped to WASC standards. For example, CSUSM found that their students were more likely than those at other California State University institutions to engage in behaviors associated with higher-order learning and used this information to articulate the ways in which their students had developed skills as Comprehensive and Critical Thinkers (one of the four ULOs). Similarly, for the Skilled Communicators ULOs, levels of satisfaction among students.
In concert with other data sources, such as CIRP’s freshman and senior surveys and the American College Health Association–National College Heath Assessment survey, CSUSM expertly aligned their own institution’s ULOs with WASC standards and used evidence from NSSE to highlight achievements in student learning on their campus. CSUSM is making progress toward establishing a culture of data to inform action and to demonstrate student learning outcomes.
the institutional report noted high scores for the frequency at which students give presentations in class and for crediting their university experience for the development of oral communication skills. Lastly, the CSUSM institutional report used NSSE data to illustrate high
