|
Students
at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
|
 |
|
Supportive Campus
Environment: Student-faculty interaction and collaborative
learning were key areas that helped enrich the educational
experience as cited by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
students in this year's National Survey of Student Engagemen |
enjoy a
supportive campus environment while being more academically engaged --
in and out of the classroom -- than the national average of
undergraduate students at colleges and universities that participated in
the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) report,
"Experiences That Matter: Enhancing Student Learning and Success," which
was based on information from first-year and senior students at
four-year colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.
Sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,
the NSSE study gives schools an idea of how well students are learning
and what they get out of their undergraduate experience. Information is
based on roughly 313,000 randomly selected first-year and senior
students at 610 four-year colleges in the United States and Canada.
"NSSE
allows us to examine in quantified terms, how teaching and learning is
taking place at Rose-Hulman and how satisfied students are with their
experiences," said Julia Williams, executive director of the Office of
Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment and a professor
English. "The report shows that we are connecting with our students and
providing an enriching educational experience."
The
survey findings provide comparative standards for determining how
effectively colleges are contributing to learning. Five key areas of
educational performance are measured: level of academic challenge,
active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction,
enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environment.
Overwhelmingly, students indicated they would attend Rose-Hulman if they
had to choose a school again -– 92 percent of first-year students and 79
percent of seniors.
This year’s survey also revealed:
•
Sixty-eight percent of first-year and 76 percent of senior students
reported their relationship with faculty members were “available,
helpful and sympathetic.” Rose-Hulman students rated four of the
“Student-Faculty Interaction” and “Level of Academic Challenge” items
significantly higher than the Indiana and national averages.
•
Both first-year and senior students at Rose-Hulman rated two of the
“Enriching Educational Experience” items significantly higher than
Indiana and NSSE schools: “Using an Electronic Medium to Discuss or
Complete an Assignment” and having “Had Serious Conversations with
Students of a Different Race or Ethnicity Than Your Own.”
•
The majority of Rose-Hulman students reported the college placed most
emphasis on the following areas: “Spending Significant Amounts of Time
Studying and on Academic Work” (3.64 for first-year students; 3.67 for
seniors), “Providing the Support You Need to Help You Succeed
Academically” (3.66/3.59); and “Using Computers in Academic Work
(3.84/3.91).
•
The majority of Rose-Hulman students were required to read between five
and 10 textbooks during the academic year. The majority of papers were
less than five pages in length.
"NSSE is
an institution's most trustworthy lens for seeing deeply into the
quality of students' experiences because its results can translate
directly into plans for action and reform and transformation
strategies," says Lee S. Shulman, president of The Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching.
For the
first time, NSSE is available to the public, along with being used as a
benchmarking tool by colleges. Through an arrangement with USA Today,
the sponsors of the survey invited all colleges that participated in the
survey from 2005 through 2007 to include their summary statistics in a
database that’s available on the national newspaper’s Web site (www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-04-nsse-how-to_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip).
Williams
told USA Today that Rose-Hulman is making its NSSE data available to
families for the first time because transparency is "the right thing to
do." Choosing a college "is a major life decision, and (families) want
to feel confident that they have made the right one," she says.
Also,
Rose-Hulman administrators felt strongly that the quality of information
provided by NSSE meant that it was reliable a useful to prospective
students and their families.
“As long
as the information that is going out is sound evidence of what we do at
Rose-Hulman, then we have no problem with it,” said Williams. | 
