Holy Family University Promotes Engagement Through Workshops

Staff from the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment at Holy Family University (HFU), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, coordinated two lunch-and-learn sessions on campus to introduce NSSE and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE), to share 2013 survey results, and to encourage faculty and staff to use the results in campus assessment and improvement projects. The first session, focusing on NSSE, began with a presentation about what NSSE is, why the campus participates, how the NSSE instrument has changed, and HFU’s participation history. Staff shared their gains from NSSE participation, highlighting the reports and resources from their latest administration along with results demonstrating the link between NSSE’s themes and HFU’s mission. The opening presentation concluded with examples of other institutions’ uses of NSSE results (from Lessons from the Field, Volumes 1 and 2). For the interactive portion of the session, the staff split the audience into two groups—one taking the role of first-year students and the other the role of seniors. Each group was tasked with predicting HFU student responses on Engagement Indicator items and how these would compare to comparison-group responses. As actual results were revealed, attendees discussed how they differed from the predicted results, why that might be, and how the campus could work together to improve student engagement. For the final portion of the session, the whole audience, taking the role of seniors, predicted senior responses on the High-Impact Practice items. HFU’s second lunch-and-learn session introduced FSSE and detailed why HFU participates, presented results in HFU’s NSSE–FSSE Combined Report, discussed differences between faculty and student responses, and generated suggestions from the results for improving instructional strategies. Following up on these sessions, institutional research and assessment staff created for faculty and staff an internal Blackboard webpage displaying both NSSE and FSSE reports.