Rhode Island College (RIC), the state’s first public institution of higher education, now serving approximately 9,000 students in courses and programs on and off campus, has participated in NSSE five times, including in 2013. When sharing their 2013 NSSE results with the RIC community, the assessment/ institutional research team prepared customized presentations that highlighted RIC’s results in relation to those of carefully selected comparison institutions. In addition, identical NSSE items were compared directly, over time, between 2013 and previous years’ administrations. Presentations were made to RIC’s executive team, student affairs personnel, and faculty involved and interested in assessment.
To further encourage reflection on and improvements in student learning and engagement, RIC created a webpage providing a greater number of resources to faculty and staff. Through this public resource with NSSE results, the college sought to foster the use of assessment data across campus. The webpage features a comprehensive report highlighting NSSE data and longitudinal changes in RIC results alongside results from RIC’s three comparison groups, as well as a short report focusing on data most relevant to faculty. Updating benchmarking for current campus initiatives related to NSSE 2013 item-level results, this short report can facilitate faculty and staff discussions of how initiatives are impacting student engagement and learning outcomes.
