National Survey of Student Engagement

NSSE 2020 Results

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is a survey of college freshmen and seniors designed to assess student involvement in practices associated with high levels of learning, show what students think of their undergraduate experience, and how they are benefiting from their studies. In spring 2020 all UW-Madison first-year students and seniors were invited to respond to NSSE. The UW-Madison response rate was 9% — 747 first-year students (10%) and 730 seniors (8%) responded. The 2020 fielding of NSSE occurred during the COVID-19 disruption.

The profile of respondents is similar overall to the fielding of NSSE in 2017 and prior years, but the response rate was less than half of what it was in 2017. We attribute the lower response rate to not providing an incentive as we did in 2014 and 2017, and in part to the Covid-19 disruption. NSSE went into the field on 2/13/2020 before the Covid-19 disruption and stayed live until 04/06/2020. Because of the low response rate, the number of responses is too low to do many of the disaggregation reports that we have done in prior years; only aggregate institution-level reports will be available for 2020 NSSE. Short written summaries and complete data tables provided by NSSE are linked in the column to the right, with a brief set of highlights detailed below. For more information about NSSE and UW-Madison’s results contact Sara Lazenby.

NSSE Highlights

UW-Madison students report high levels of satisfaction and an emphasis on academics throughout the survey. 89% of seniors rate their overall experience as good or excellent (significantly higher than peers) and 91% of seniors rate the academic quality of UW-Madison as good/excellent, significantly higher than peers.

UW-Madison students also rate the quality of interactions with others highly, reporting high quality interactions with faculty, academic advisors, student services staff (career services, student activities, housing, etc.), other administrative staff (registrar, financial aid, etc.), and other students.

While in general across the survey significant differences from peers have a small effect size, a number of items show larger effect sizes for first-year students and seniors. These items are areas where UW-Madison students report differences in relation to peer institutions.

First-year students report that they spend more time preparing for class, more time reading, more frequently identify key information from their reading assignments than peers and report more engagement in course discussions. First-year students report that the institution places a higher level of emphasis on the use of learning support services (tutoring, writing center, etc.) than at peers. They rate their educational experience, interactions with faculty, and the academic quality of the institution as higher quality as compared to peers and are more likely to feel like they are part of a community.

In contrast, first-year students report completing fewer course presentations and were less likely to make a speech to a group compared to peers, potentially pointing to a greater emphasis on developing oral communication skills at peer institutions.

Despite UW-Madison’s emphasis on the community and service learning, first-year students report less community service or volunteer work as compared to peers and that fewer of their courses have included a community-based project or service-learning than at peer institutions.

First-year students reported high levels of satisfaction with the quality of interactions with faculty, and they reported they were less likely to work with a faculty member outside of their coursework than peers (committees, student groups, etc.).

Seniors also report that they spend more time studying and completing other academic work, including identifying key information from assigned reading. Similar to first-year students, they report a high emphasis from the institution on the use of learning support services. In addition, they are more likely to connect their learning to societal problems or issues as compared to seniors at peer institutions.

Like first-year students, seniors report completing fewer course presentations and speeches compared to peers.

Seniors reported that they less frequently had discussions with people with different political views or of a race or ethnicity other than their own as compared to peer institutions. Seniors were also less likely to discuss their academic performance with a faculty member compared to seniors at peers.