The Ohio State University (OSU), a public research university in Columbus, Ohio, has participated in NSSE six times and has launched an initiative to focus on enhancing the campus’s use of NSSE data and to create systems to more effectively support assessment, reaccreditation, and institutional improvement across campus. The university is interested in merging their NSSE results with other data sets on campus. In order to do this, they initially organized a group to trend comparative data from NSSE. Next, they plan to combine the NSSE results with other data sets, and then create division- and department-level reports. While waiting for their custom reports, departments have been provided raw NSSE data for their own analysis. When asked what they were most eager to learn from the NSSE results, departments reported being particularly interested in learning about the behaviors of graduating seniors.
In an effort to systematically share NSSE data across campus, the Office of Institutional Research and Planning (OIRP) designed an innovative approach to connect with the rest of campus. First, each person in IR made two lists: (a) informal list of who they currently work with or have partnerships with on campus; and (b) a list of who they would like to partner with on campus. Next, the IR department looked across all of the lists to see who could be NSSE users, who would be great candidates of users, and who or what parts of campus were not connected to NSSE data. To better connect NSSE results with departments that have their own analysis or assessment specialist, the OIRP invited department-level analysts to meet with them about how they can use NSSE within their department and in their work (for example, internal surveys or department-level surveys). OSU has a large number of colleges and divisions on campus, so many—but not all—offices have their own assessment expert. Utilizing the lists generated internally, the OIRP will make sure the offices that need support or training on NSSE data will receive it. Over time, the OIRP will work with the parts of campus that are less connected to NSSE data to better incorporate them. Through this intentional partnership effort, OSU is working to make NSSE results salient to more campus units.
