Dr. Sharon M. Bailey, the Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness at the University of Houston–Victoria, invented an undergraduate research project with the goal of disseminating NSSE results to the greater campus. For this project, two work-study students devised a creative, interactive approach to sharing results. They designed, printed, and folded paper fortune tellers, a form of origami used in children’s games, with the institution’s BCSSE, NSSE, and FSSE results, making several different versions of the fortune tellers based on different research questions. One showed the average number of hours students work for pay (from NSSE) and faculty perceptions of student time working for pay (from FSSE), providing a conversation-starter about the differences between actual student behavior and faculty perceptions of student behavior. Another compared students’ expectations about how often they would go to class unprepared (BCSSE) with the percentage of freshmen and seniors who reported going to class unprepared (NSSE).
Using the University of Houston–Victoria’s NSSE and FSSE reports, the students assigned to this project developed key research skills such as collaborating with peers to coordinate the project and interpret the data and effective reporting skills such as identifying important information, reviewing data for accuracy, and tailoring data to a particular audience.
In the guidebook these student researchers developed to help others create similar paper fortune tellers, they wrote, “Look for pieces of data from each survey that would go good together. Make sure the data used would appeal to targeted audience.” The experiences of these students engaged them in communication, quantitative reasoning, and teamwork. Developing this advertisement for NSSE data required creative energy, and the students were proud of their results.
In the end, these two students designed 14 distinct paper fortune tellers with facts from survey results, and they printed and folded more than 300. The fortune tellers were placed on tables in the student cafeteria and at the faculty and staff appreciation lunch, and the extras were used by the alumni office.
The project was successful in getting campus partners who otherwise might not be familiar with NSSE data to actually see some of the results in their hands. Even a year later, Dr. Bailey ran into faculty and staff who remembered the paper fortune tellers and, in spring 2017, she reprised the project, this time with a message encouraging faculty to participate in FSSE.
