Undergraduate students believe that Carleton provides an “excellent” educational experience, according to a recent national survey.
The 2011 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) showed 85 per cent of first-year respondents and 82 per cent of students in their final year rated their overall educational experience at Carleton as either good or excellent — slightly above the provincial average of 81 per cent for first-year and 77 per cent of fourth-year students.
Conducted across the United States and Canada, the NSSE was launched in 1999 with the goal of helping improve the quality of undergraduate education, according to Jillian Kinzie, associate director of the NSSE Institute.
The survey is voluntary, and 761 colleges and universities across North America chose to participate this year.
The institute sends out approximately one million invitations to students and usually about 500,000 respond, Kinzie said.
After administering the survey to students, the NSSE collects the data and sends it back to the institutions so they can use it to improve, she said. The survey is based on a variety of criteria, from the extent to which students ask questions in class, to institutional perceptions, like how well students feel supported in their education.
“It really focuses on academic behaviours, the behaviours that we know matter to learning,” Kinzie said.
The survey specifically targets first-year and fourth-year students — a demographic that accurately represents the overall university demographic, Kinzie said.
Carleton’s results are an improvement from the last survey in 2008, with an increase in “excellent” ratings by first-year respondents from 29 per cent to 34 per cent, according to a Carleton press release.
“I am delighted with the level of student satisfaction which reflects the quality, dedication and hard work of our faculty and staff,” Carleton president Roseann Runte said via email.
“Each year, we add or change programs in response to students' requests and comments,” Runte said. “I am pleased that this effort is appreciated by our students.”
In recent years, Carleton has introduced several measures to improve the academic experience, such as a co-curricular record to recognize students’ extracurricular activities and a mobile app where students can access their schedules, grades, and even campus maps, according to the press release.
“I’m really glad to see that there’s also this avenue of measurement where we’ve actually done quite well,” fourth-year journalism student Averie Macdonald said about the survey.
She said she feels Carleton’s reputation has suffered in recent years in the popular Maclean’s magazine university rankings and feels the positive results are accurate.
First-year law student Richard Trusty said he agrees.
“As a first-year student, I find Carleton really welcoming, both academically and socially,” Trusty said.
