Engagement is a joint project that demands much more than a committee of inquiry. It requires an open discussion about what we value, and what we want to encourage.

So here are my initial observations on the Faculty of Arts NSSE 2014 data. For each page I note a few features, and some potential next actions on this project. These are not definitive interpretations or official policy statements; they’re only meant to start the conversation.

Page 1

The first page is a series of “Engagement Indicators.” For definitions and examples, scroll down to “Engagement Indicator Descriptions and Component Items” on that page.

For the most part, these figures are more neutral than they look. The first four of them (below) owe more to the nature of what we teach in Arts than how we’re teaching it.

1. Reflective & Integrative Learning is significantly above the institutional average. This includes accounting for diverse viewpoints; doing self-scrutiny & metacognition (thinking about thinking); and connecting a range of ideas.
2. Learning Strategies are also above average, because they cover reading comprehension and summary.
3. For the same reason, our Quantitative Reasoning (analyzing numerical information) scores are low because, well, most of our departments don’t do graphs.
4. Collaborative Learning (group study/projects) scores are quite low because our disciplines privilege individual scholarship. We can debate whether or not they should, and whether we should encourage collaborative learning beyond class presentations. But like the others, this indicator doesn’t feel like a surprise.
5. Both Higher-Order Learning and Effective Teaching Practices are better-than-average, but only for our senior-year students. This suggests that suggests that first-year students are doing more information-consuming than -producing, as we might expect. We improve that by talking about how to balance knowledge with skills – not only what to know, but how to evaluate it – earlier in our programs.

Which other indicators do we want to improve for 2017? There are four others where we’re on par with the University of Calgary at large. How does that sit with us?
For instance: I’m surprised that our Discussions with Diverse Others score isn’t higher. It suggests that we could expose our students to even more novel ideas and more diverse perspectves than we’re already doing. Our upcoming “Teaching Controversial Topics” workshop might give us some guidance here.

Page 2

On the second page (let’s move faster through these now), you can see on the first and last charts that Arts’ first-year students don’t study or write as much as their peers do. While the upper-year students spend more time on their work, the numbers are still lower – except for writing, as we’d expect from our essay-focused assessments.
We might be able to ask more of our students: more reading time, more preparation for class. Not more writing, but a bit more emphasis on spending the necessary time with the material.

Page 3

Finally, the third page weighs how students view the Engagement Indicators (left/blue bar graph). We’re meeting the first three, namely critical thinking and written/oral communication. But we do less well on the fourth (diverse viewpoints) and fifth (collaboration).

• Take a look at the final two graphs on that page: students’ overall experience, and their regret/satisfaction with their decision to do an Arts degree here.
• Our first-years are a bit more enthusiastic (2%) than the UofC average. But for upper-years we’re 5% lower — so don’t open the proverbial champagne just yet. 7 out of 10 graduates would call their experience in Arts “Excellent” or “Good.”
• This feels like a lagging indicator: the result of our leading indicators in the earlier sections (particularly page 1).
• We need to talk more openly, as a faculty, about how to make students more satisfied with their degrees while preserving academic standards and disciplinary practices. For example, we can’t mandate more group projects: we privilege individual scholarship. But we can talk about diversifying viewpoints and arguments.