Data Use Teams

Data Use Teams

Using engagement data to guide improvements on campus is our raison d’être! Have you thought about how you are going to use your NSSE/FSSE data? A first step is to form a team of interested staff on your campus. Data use teams have become a popular approach to increase the use of evidence to inform improvement in K–12 schools and districts as well as more colleges and universities. Our studies of NSSE data use suggest data get more traction on campus when a team is charged with promoting the survey, interpreting data, and acting on results. Adopting a team approach to a NSSE administration promotes successful survey administration and action on results.

To encourage this approach, NSSE invites participating colleges and universities to form a team of interested staff to support their NSSE administration and action on data. Using the "Data Use Team" section under the Data & Reports table on the NSSE Institution Interface, institutions may identify team members, in addition to the NSSE Campus Project Manager and Campus Administrative Contact already named (note that Interface access is currently only available to your named Campus Contacts). 

Currently about 443 institutions named members to their data team. Here is some information about these teams:

  • Most institutions added 2 or 3 team members to their current roster of NSSE contacts, for teams of about 5.
  • Official titles of team members are primarily from the institutional research office or an assessment unit, but just as many are associated with student affairs or academic affairs, including provost and dean of faculty.
  • The wide-ranging campus roles of team members include librarian; registrar; dean; student affairs director; first-year experience coordinator; Title III grant administrator; and faculty in history, economics, mathematics, and sociology, among others.

We hope to learn more about how these teams are assembled and think about NSSE results. If you have a story about your team's NSSE data use, please tell us your story!

Why Data Teams?

“These days, there’s simply too much information readily available about students’ experience and their success to not take advantage of it to monitor, derive insights about what’s working and for whom and inform action,” Kinzie says. “Routine data at the institution, program and course levels—including semester-to-semester retention, grades in gateway courses, learning analytics, student engagement survey and climate results, student involvement levels, advising visit rates, among others, should be tapped for insights about what needs attention. Student success efforts must be centered on data.”   

- Jillian Kinzie, Inside Higher Education, April 9, 2024