For Students
First and fourth year students (excluding those Education and Law) will be asked to participate in NSSE. “First-year” refers to students who registered for their studies in Fall 2022. “Fourth-year” refers to students who have acquired enough credits to graduate.
The NSSE survey will run from March 1 to April 3. All eligible students will receive a unique survey link from Vice-Provost Students, Nona Robinson, on March 1. Additionally, you will receive a reminder each week from Vice-Provost, Students Nona Robinson with your unique survey link until the end of the survey period.
We would love to receive your feedback. Access a short form through the eligibility tool to have your say.
See Incentives and Prizes for more information about prize redemption.
York University has administered the NSSE survey since 2004. Each survey administration period, we receive insights from students that help us improve student services and the student experience at York.
Yes, international students are eligible to participate in NSSE.
For Faculty and Staff
NSSE stands for the National Survey of Student Engagement and is pronounced “Nessie”. It is conducted by the Indiana University Survey Research Centre on behalf of the NSSE Institute. It is widely recognized as a pre-eminent tool for measuring undergraduate student engagement, defined by NSSE as “the extent to which students participate in educationally purposeful activities, how much time and effort they invest in their studies and how well their university facilitates such involvement”. Results from NSSE are used to inform strategic planning decisions at York. Read more about NSSE here: https://www.yorku.ca/oipa/nsse/
NSSE defines engagement as the 1) amount of time and effort students put into their studies and other purposeful activities and 2) how well an institution uses its resources and organizes its curriculum to get students involved in educationally meaningful activities.
As well as providing responses to individual questions, NSSE provides an overview in which it groups answers to questions into four themes and ten indicators:
| Theme | Indicators |
|---|---|
| Academic Challenge | Higher-order learning Reflective and integrative learning Learning strategies Quantitative reasoning |
| Learning with Peers | Collaborative learning Discussion with diverse others |
| Experiences with Faculty | Student-faculty interactions Effective teaching practices |
| Campus Environment | Quality of Interactions Supportive Environment |
NSSE also measures and compares participation in six “High Impact Practices” or HIPs.
| High Impact Practices
|
Learning Community Service Learning Research with faculty member Experiential learning Study abroad Culminating senior experience |
We need every faculty member and administrator to encourage students to participate in the survey. The involvement of faculty and staff are key to the success of promotional efforts. Having a faculty or staff member outline the value placed on NSSE by the institution could help students see that NSSE is an important instrument worth completing.
For details about what information to share and how to share it, contact yorknsse@yorku.ca.
As part of the comprehensive print and online communications campaign we’ve launched to promote participation, we’ve created a Communications Toolkit for Faculty, Administrators and Student Leaders. This Toolkit is designed to support conversation between peers as well as between faculty/staff and students. The Toolkit will include a PowerPoint presentation, a promotional button for websites, FAQs, a poster template for service area desks, content that can be used for newsletters or emails, protocols for promoting NSSE to students, and talking points.
To learn more about this toolkit, contact yorknsse@yorku.ca.
NSSE data helps York improve the student learning experience.
- To measure student engagement
York’s Institutional Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) includes a commitment to innovative pedagogies, interdisciplinarity and student engagement in learning in its statement of values and principles:
- To improve student academic success
"…[T]he greater the student's involvement or engagement in academic work or in the academic experience of college, the greater his or her level of knowledge acquisition and general cognitive development... [A] substantial amount of evidence indicates that there are instructional and programmatic interventions that not only increase a student's active engagement in learning and academic work but also enhance knowledge acquisition and some dimensions of both cognitive and psychosocial change”
— How College Affects Students: Findings and Insights from Twenty Years of Research. Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini (1991) - To enhance institutional reputation
NSSE was developed as an alternative to measures of academic reputation and is not meant to be ranked. See http://nsse.indiana.edu/html/ranking.cfm. It works best as a tool to measure the progress of an individual institution. It is often ranked nevertheless.
Maclean’s compares indicator scores and comments on levels of engagement at Canadian universities in this 2015 article entitled: National Survey of Student Engagement: A truer measure of quality.
- To guide York’s efforts to improve its reputation and achieve strategic goals stated in the:
- University Academic Plan 2020 - 2025
- Institutional Integrated Resource Plan
- Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM)
- Strategic Mandate Agreement
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