{"id":703,"date":"2024-05-20T21:22:26","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T04:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/?p=703"},"modified":"2024-05-20T21:22:26","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T04:22:26","slug":"monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/2024\/05\/20\/monster\/","title":{"rendered":"Monster Response Rates for the NSSE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>by <a href=\"mailto:Sarah.Norek@oregonstate.edu?subject=The%20Success%20Kitchen%20-%20Monster%20Response%20Rates\">Sarah Norek<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the time you read this, OSU\u2019s 2024 running of the NSSE (<a href=\"https:\/\/nsse.indiana.edu\/nsse\/index.html\">National Survey on Student Engagement<\/a>) will have closed. This year, roughly 11,000 students were invited to take the survey (of first-year &amp; senior status) from Corvallis, Ecampus and Cascades campuses. During the months of April and May, you may have spotted the NSSE across campus, as a sticker, a digital sign, or a poster (shout out to MU Creative Studio for designing such a rad NSSE graphic!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2593\/files\/2024\/05\/image.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"624\" height=\"312\" src=\"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2593\/files\/2024\/05\/image.png\" alt=\"A light blue water dinosaur with dark blue outline next to the text &quot;NSSE National Survey of Student Engagement&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-704\" srcset=\"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2593\/files\/2024\/05\/image.png 624w, https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2593\/files\/2024\/05\/image-300x150.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Response Rates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>OSU-Cascades first-year &amp; senior response rate: 40.8%<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>OSU-Cascades login rate: 50.8%<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>OSU Corvallis &amp; Ecampus combined first-year &amp; senior response rate: 42.3%<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>OSU Corvallis &amp; Ecampus login rate: 50.5%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Getting students to know about the survey so they <em>could<\/em> take it was a fun multi-campus\/cross-unit feat of creativity, intentionality, planning and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Takeaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Following, you\u2019ll find takeaways from members of this year\u2019s NSSE team reflecting on the experience, what was learned about the running of a survey on this scale, and curiosities that remain. If you have questions or want to talk more about any of this, please reach out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Collaboration is key<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Collaboration can look very different between people and groups. Our approach was to connect early and routinely, think and ideate together, and divvy tasks to bring those thoughts and ideas to fruition. Chris Gasser offered, \u201cI think the collaborative approach made all the difference! We had student-centered people with various expertise working together toward a common goal of improving the response rate. It\u2019s hard to beat that!\u201d Nathan Moses also shared this observation: \u201cI think it\u2019s important to have a conversation around the skillsets that the team members have that might not be apparent in their title.\u201d Sadly, Nathan\u2019s TikTok as NSSE emerging from the river never panned out, but we were there for it! \ud83d\ude0a The team collaborated between campuses, across units, and with students, the NSSE\u2019s target audience. Shared Nathan, \u201cWe literally worked with students on the process, assessing what would draw their attention through smaller info groups, and leaning heavily on our MU Creative Studio students to bring to life something that would appeal to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Stay curious<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe started by answering the questions, \u2018Should we use this survey?\u2019 and \u2018What are the benefits if we get a higher response rate?\u2019\u201d Then, as we thought about how we might be able to increase survey response rates this year, \u201crather than accepting \u2018we can\u2019t do that\u2019 or \u2018we\u2019ve never done it that way\u2019 we began asking \u2018who needs to be here to help us accomplish that.\u2019 That was a pretty powerful reframing that I think yielded huge benefits!\u201d And the questions kept going: \u201cHow can we get students to open their emails?\u201d \u201cWhere can we show up for students so they know about the survey if they\u2019re not opening emails?\u201d \u201cWho could the emails come from?\u201d \u201cWhat incentive language would resonate for folks?\u201d The team approached NSSE as a puzzle rather than a chore, and then kept asking questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Maximize modalities &amp; systems<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>It was important to meet students where they were at, through multiple modalities. Nathan offered, \u201cWe ran this process similar to a new branding campaign in that we used email, digital art, giveaways, and promo items to create a uniform experience. It\u2019s great to see those Nessy stickers on the back of laptops!\u201d It is so great! And Canvas was utilized, too. Students received a series of emails (thanks to a Marketing Cloud Journey that connected with Beaver Hub), were assigned a task in Beaver Hub, encountered NSSE survey signage in common areas, and found the NSSE shell when they visited their Canvas platform. Everywhere possible, the NSSE graphic was used to brand communications to the survey and further emphasize the link between what students were seeing and receiving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Right-size for the survey<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This campaign style approach worked for this survey, but it won\u2019t be feasible for all surveys for a number of reasons. However, Chris shared, \u201cNSSE is making me completely rethink how we might do surveys at OSU.\u201d Students express survey fatigue, and resources aren\u2019t always available to support incentives or create an email journey or design graphics and giveaways. Engaging in a thought activity, though, where one imagines what a campaign might be like, could yield new or different approaches that might lead to adaptations in the delivery, which may (or may not \u2013 it\u2019s an experiment!) have positive impacts on results.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that the data is collected, there\u2019s so much to learn! Nathan offered that, \u201cbecause of the power of working between campuses was so evident, I would assume that being intentional with connecting with comparable schools might yield interesting outcomes with the data.\u201d I (Sarah) want to know more about how students ultimately accessed the survey because, while thousands of email recipients opened the survey, and total opens were always about double the amount of unique opens, there were, comparatively, a very low rate of clicks on the survey links from the email. We may not have a way to know exactly where students were accessing the survey from, so that\u2019s an area for further investigation, but it feels like it underscores the opportunity to explore what compels students to go to a survey and where they prefer to access it from. And then there are all the responses to the questions themselves \u2013 there\u2019s a great data-set from this year, and much to learn from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, this survey and its results wouldn\u2019t be what they are without a number of folks at OSU \u2013 the students who took it, and those faculty and staff outside of the NSSE team who helped make this campaign possible. UIT provided an immense amount of support for Beaver Hub and the Marketing Cloud Journey that was built to send emails automatically and also pull folks who\u2019d completed the survey or opted out from subsequent emails, as well as close Beaver Hub tasks. Academic Technology helped build out the Canvas option for students to be able to find and access the NSSE in their course portal \u2013 their unique link, which cut down on the number of clicks folks had to make. MU Creative Studio designed the NSSE and made posters for the start, middle, and end of the survey. And everyone who signed the emails (including President Murthy and Benny Beaver!) and the students and staff whose sticker placement on their belongings helped spread the NSSE sightings far and wide \u2013 thank you to you all! It will be exciting to share more as responses are explored, meaning is made, and likely more questions are asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Sarah Norek By the time you read this, OSU\u2019s 2024 running of the NSSE (National Survey on Student Engagement) will have closed. This year, roughly 11,000 students were invited to take the survey (of first-year &amp; senior status) from Corvallis, Ecampus and Cascades campuses. During the months of April and May, you may have &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/2024\/05\/20\/monster\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Monster Response Rates for the NSSE&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2024-issue-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}