About the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement

The NSSE project surveys undergraduates at four-year colleges and universities to assess the extent to which they engage in a variety of good educational practices. The 2008 year was the ninth in which the survey was nationally administered and the sixth in which Winthrop participated. More than 769 public and private four-year colleges and universities participated in 2008. The NSSE project is supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts and cosponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and The Pew Forum for Undergraduate Learning.

The NSSE instrument, The College Student Report, consists principally of items related to institutional contributions to student engagement, important college outcomes, and institutional quality. Questions pertain to both student perceptions of the extent to which the institution actively encourages student engagement as well as to student reports of actual behavior. A copy of The College Student Report may be examined on-line at http://nsse.iub.edu/index.cfm.

Sections of this overview were taken or adapted (with permission) from the NSSE 2008 Overview provided by the National Survey of Student Engagement project.

Winthrop Scores High in 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement

In the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), Winthrop first-year students and seniors self-reported higher than their peers on level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interactions, supportive campus environment, and enriching educational experiences. In addition, Winthrop students showed substantial increases in most of these areas from 2004 to 2008.

What is student engagement?

Student engagement is the level of contact and activity students have at Winthrop. It includes their contact with other students, faculty members and administrative offices, as well as their level of involvement with coursework, research and educational programming both inside and outside of the classroom.

Who completed the 2008 survey?

Nationally more than 478,000 students. At Winthrop 235 first-year students and 152 seniors. Winthrop is the only public institution in South Carolina to have administered the NSSE each of the past six years.

What are the benchmarks?

In addition to individual survey items on which Winthrop students scored high, the university also fared extremely well on the NSSE benchmarks for 2008. The benchmarks are five key areas that help determine how effectively colleges are contributing to learning -- level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interactions, enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environment.

How well did Winthrop and its students do?

For both participating first-year students and seniors, the university's results exceeded those of selected Southeast public peers as determined by NSSE in all five of the benchmark categories.

Click the links at left for Winthrop's results in specific benchmark areas. For survey items on which Winthrop students significantly exceeded the national average, see the “Winthrop Results” link above.

In 2008, NSSE produced a "multi-year benchmark report" that shows how first-year students and seniors responded in each of the five areas from 2001 to 2008.  Responses from first-year students increased substantially in all five areas between 2001 to 2008 for level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, and supportive campus environment.  NSSE began measuring enriching educational experiences in 2004.  Again, first-year students showed a substantial increase in this area between 2004 and 2008.

The seniors showed a substantial increase over the time period for level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, and student-faculty interaction.  Slight decreases were noted for the seniors for supportive campus environment and enriching educational experiences.