Addressing the mental health and counseling needs of students on college campuses is perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing higher education. In fact, a recent survey of senior student affairs officers revealed that students’ mental health was the top issue facing student affairs (NASPA, 2008).

In order to address these issues, NASPA has partnered with the Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health (CSCMH) to administer the NASPA Assessment and Knowledge Consortium Mental Health and Counseling Study. Located at the Pennsylvania State University, the CSCMH is a perfect partner for this endeavor as the CSCMH is an emerging multi-disciplinary research center focused on providing accurate and up-to-date information about the mental health of today's college students in order to serve the needs of mental health providers, administrators, researchers, and the public. To date, CSCMH has assessed students who visit Counseling Centers across the country, but they have yet to survey a random sample of the college student population including those who may be in need of services but never visit the counseling center or take advantage of on-campus mental health resources.

The Consortium Mental Health and Counseling Study is comprised of the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms (CCAPS©) and additional mental health-related questions. The CCAPS© is a 62-item validated instrument comprised of eight scales covering the topics of: - depression - generalized anxiety - social anxiety - academic distress - eating concerns - family distress - hostility - substance abuse The first CCAPS© was developed in 2001 by Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Michigan, although management has now moved to the Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health (CSCMH). The remaining study questions assess student experiences both before and after enrolling in college with various mental health concerns. The study also includes a set of standard demographics questions. The study is designed to be administered to a random sample of students from all class standings.

The timeframe for administration is spring 2010. To view the survey, visit: https://www.studentvoice.com/app/views/about/partnerships/CSCMH.aspx Participation in this study is included in a StudentVoice Member Campus annual license and is one of the studies included in the 2009-2010 NASPA Consortium. If you campus would like more information or is ready to sign-up, please visit: http://studentvoice.com/signup2010

To learn more about the work of the CSCMH, visit: http://www.sa.psu.edu/caps/research_center.shtml

After great success during its inaugural year last year, the NASPA Consortium for 2009-2010 is in full-swing as colleges and universities are signing up and getting geared up for a new year of assessment activities.  It is not too late for your campus to learn more about the Consortium and sign-up at: http://naspaconsortium.org

What makes the NASPA Consortium unique or different from other national assessment initiatives? First off, it is not just a NASPA project. Rather, each component of the Consortium is a partnership with other national associations – such as ACUI, NIRSA, NACA, and others. The partnerships ensure that the data collection, results, and utilization of the information will be meaningful for their respective fields. As an example, the NACA Campus Activities portion of the Consortium was overseen by a group of directors of campus activities who reviewed the assessment instrument for relevancy and who are now working to interpret the wealth of information and knowledge that resulted from data from over 10,000 students and 300 campus activities professionals nation-wide. In addition to campus activities, the 2008-2009 Consortium addressed: Campus Safety, Student Conduct, and Diversity/Multiculturalism. This year’s topical areas include: Student Union and Programming, Mental Health and Counseling, Career and Professional Aspirations, and Recreation and Wellness.

Another unique aspect of Consortium is the ability to look across datasets to view both student and staff perspectives, as the Consortium includes data from students about their perceptions, outcomes, and experiences, as well as data from staff about their operations, staffing patterns, programming, resources, and best practices. When paired together, the data reveals some interesting information – particularly in terms of where student/staff perspectives align or where there may be a disconnect. For example, sense of belonging on campus, increased leadership development, and improved critical thinking are the most important participation outcomes, according to campus activities professionals. Students, however, are most likely to indicate that they gain a greater connection with other students, meet new people with different interests, and improve communication skills through participation. This finding opens up new opportunities to talk about how we articulate and share outcomes with participants, as well as opening up opportunities to involve students more in the development of outcomes.

And a last unique feature worth spotlighting is the ability to link data across the content areas under study to get a more holistic understanding of the student experience. Being able to combine, through StudentVoice cross-project reporting, the student data about campus activities with the student data about diversity or the other content areas, provides new layers of insight and a less-siloed view of departments or programs. By looking across datasets, the analysis of the national dataset revealed, for example, that students who took an active role in campus activities were more likely than their uninvolved counterparts to indicate that they took advantage of opportunities at their college to learn about diversity-related issues. Involved students were also more likely to agree that they discuss diversity-related issues with friends and that they have become more open-minded about diversity-related issues since starting college. 

If your campus is considering joining the Consortium, visit the web page: http://naspaconsortium.org to learn more or email consortium@studentvoice.com.

Out with the old technology and in with the new…

As many of you know, StudentVoice got its start with PDA mobile data collection at SUNY Buffalo, so the big switch to the Apple iPod Touch marks the end of an assessment era. It is certainly bittersweet to see boxes of worn-out PDAs arriving at the SV doorstep as part of our Apple iPod Touch exchange program. If those PDAs could talk, oh what tales they would tell! They’ve been all over your campuses in hundreds of hands – they’ve been there for your important events, your career fairs, your orientations, and your workshops. They’ve attended your Welcome Weeks, your Alternative Spring Breaks, your After Dark programs, and your staff trainings. In total, StudentVoice PDAs have been used for thousands of assessment projects on just about every topic you could imagine. They’ve actually told us a lot about the student experience even though they can’t talk (or play music!). PDAs have sure served their purpose, but let’s face it – using the PDAs for data collection has had some serious limitations from the hot sync process, to the limited functionality, to the scary prospect that all your data could be lost if the battery went dead. (Kelly won’t miss getting those calls!) With a Wi-Fi connection, data will be automatically uploaded to StudentVoice from the Apple device – no need to hook up to your computers like with the PDAs.

We know that "in with the new” in higher education is sometimes a slow process. So, feel free to keep using your PDAs for the next year or so. But, the new application can hopefully mark the start of a new era of mobile data collection on your campus just as it is marking a new era for StudentVoice. You won’t regret making the switch and packing up those old, clunky PDAs. If you have an iTunes store account, go in and search for SV Mobile and download it today. It’s free to download the app. Even if you don’t currently have an iPod Touch or if your campus has not yet participated in the StudentVoice PDA exchange program, sign-up for an SV Mobile Monday session and see if there are ways that mobile data collection can enhance your assessment work.

Sign-up here for an SV Mobile Monday webinar: http://community.studentvoice.com/training/ All are welcome!

We’ll be sure to share all the innovative ways that your campuses are using SV Mobile in future communications and when we come to visit your campuses. And please let us know what you think of the new application! 

As InsideHigherEd.com explains, although Margaret Spellings is out – the push to measure and document student learning is only strengthening with efforts such as the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/23/assess).  We often get asked here at StudentVoice, can a survey measure student learning? My answer to this: Yes, you can measure students’ perceptions of their learning through a survey. But, striving to triangulate your survey data with other more direct measures of learning is always ideal. Many of the projects that we facilitate at StudentVoice are indirect measures of student learning in that you are not actually seeing the student demonstrate a certain skill level or change in behavior. Asking students if they increased their level of understanding or learned something new after a program, event or experience on campus, for example, provides students’ perception of growth, development, and/or learning. Students’ perceptions of learning are certainly a valid thing to assess, but ideally you would find ways to measure different types of evidence of student learning.  

Rubrics help you to document direct measures of learning that can complement your more indirect measures of learning that you might collect through a survey. Once a rubric is developed, we can host your rubric on StudentVoice as a web or PDA form. So, instead of using pieces of paper for indicating scoring on a rubric, the data you would enter on pieces of paper and tally by hand can be input into StudentVoice directly. This approach not only provides a centralized location to store all your assessment data (whether you collect it with StudentVoice or not), but it also allows you to link with your divisional, departmental, and program goals through our online Management tool.  

This month, Carrie Zelna of NC State has graciously agreed to present on rubrics during our professional development webinar series (https://www.studentvoice.com/app/Training/WebinarsSpring09.aspx). Join us on February 18^th at 2PM (Eastern) for this session that will help you to enhance your assessment repertoire and add measures that complement your survey data.  Sign up at: http://community.studentvoice.com/training/.  

It’s that time of year! Have you checked in and assessed your new first-year and transfer students? Finding out how the transition to college is going for new students is critical. I remember being a first year student and the long bus ride home for my short fall break. It was at that time (no more than about six weeks into the semester) that I was already researching my transfer options and how to get as far away from my roommate as possible. I was proof that students often know right away whether the college is a good fit for them academically and socially. Checking in at the end of the first semester or first year is too late unfortunately, as it was for me at my first college.

In many instances, student attrition may be out of your control, but you need to know the reasons that students are leaving your college. According to Tinto, there seem to be several distinct causes of voluntary departures. These reasons include an inability to adjust both socially and academically, as well as general uncertainty about goals and a lack of congruence or feeling out of place. And there are those obvious pulls on students in terms of their external commitments and especially financial issues.

StudentVoice facilitates two studies focused on students’ transition to college. First is the Evaluating Academic Success Effectively with EASE study (you can review the questions through the featured project link at: http://www.studentvoice.com/app/views/community/). This study, developed by one of our amazing bloggers – Ted Elling at UNCC - is unique in that in addition to it being a check-in assessment for linking later on with institutional data – it is also meant to be an early intervention tool that campuses can use to link students to resources and services that can help them during their first semester and beyond. For example, if a respondent says that they are having difficulty in one or more courses, they can be re-directed at the end of the assessment to a link for the campus Tutoring Center or peer mentoring program.

During our first year of administering EASE, we received an email from a respondent. It simply said “Thanks for asking.”  I was struck by that - because it was genuine and also suggested to me that EASE might have been the first time that the student had been asked about how things were going. We also received an email from a student that proceeded to tell us their whole life story – because we had neglected to include any sort of comment box at the end (a good assessment lesson – always include a final comment box for anything that a respondent may feel the need to share with you). If by participating in EASE (or any type of new student check-in survey), your campus can connect one new student to a resource or to service or to a person that is going to help them to be successful – then it is well worth the work and may mean one more student that you will be able to count as an alum some day!

A second study we facilitate with new students is our Orientation Benchmarking Study (details are under our Resource Center for Orientation at http://www.studentvoice.com/app/views/community/resourcecenterlist.aspx). This year, we have almost 40 campuses participating so far. This study looks at the outcomes or orientation some eight-ten weeks after orientation when the information has had time to sink in with students (or not sink in, as the case may be). Many campuses struggle when asked to provide evidence about the value of orientation programming. Orientation impacts many people on campus – from those asked to staff resource fairs to faculty asked to advise to the many orientation leaders charged with helping new students to feel welcome. Bottom line - orientation is a big deal and those involved need to have data to show that it matters. When I have the opportunity to look at the results of the study, some of the most revealing data relates to students’ responses to the following: What questions do you wish had been answered during orientation that would have been helpful during your first few weeks on campus? Like EASE, if you can glean one useful piece of information from this question that can enhance your orientation program, the assessment is well worth it! And there is the added benefit of seeing how your results compare to national and peer comparison data.

It is not too late to participate in either of these studies. And I know that many of your campuses are using great home-grown instruments as well, so feel free to share your check-in surveys and early warning tools with the online Community.  For any project on our site, there is a SHARE button on the project page now – so try it out.

Looking back, I am not sure if a check-in assessment would have helped me to stay at my first college, but it would have been nice to have been asked how things were going. For those wondering, I proceeded to NOT persist at a second college my sophomore year, but the third was finally just right for me. If only someone had told me to read Tinto back then…

During my years at StudentVoice, I have been most fortunate to visit many, many colleges and universities across the United States and in Canada too. The University of Toronto was one of the first campuses that I ever visited to talk about StudentVoice. Almost exactly four years ago, I was driving the QEW (crazy 4-5 lane highway) – not only was I worried about being stuck in Toronto traffic and being inexcusably late to the meeting, I was also somewhat worried about the questions that might come up. Sure, I had used StudentVoice while I was at the U of Utah as their Coordinator of Assessment for the months prior, but this was different. What did I really know about how assessment could or should be coordinated and executed? Wasn’t every campus unique with varying challenges and issues? I knew at the time that Canada did not have accrediting bodies like in the states, but I knew little about what accountability measure were actually in place. Just when I was pretty sure that I wanted to bag the whole visit and head over to the Eaton Center instead to see how my American dollar would do during the summer sales, I arrived, found parking, found the building (if you ever go to U of T – make a point to visit their amazing Student Union and the Hart House too), and was greeted by a friendly group of administrators (Thanks Jim and Deanne!) that were actually somewhat excited about assessment. They seemed to know that U of T staff members were ready to take assessment to the next level and they just needed easy-to-use tools and resources to make it happen. I could answer their questions and more importantly, I could learn from some of their unique challenges. For example, assessing residence life is a little different when some of your residences are former downtown Toronto hotels. Since 2004, U of T has done over 100 assessment projects – from large scale studies on student technology usage, satisfaction with student services, and campus climate studies – to more focused, programmatic assessments of their leadership programs, orientation programs, and LGBTQ programs. Since that first visit to U of T, I have been incredibly lucky to go back to U of T a few additional times and to visit 70+ campuses. I continue to learn many important lessons from each visit (beyond just being sure that you know where to park on an unfamiliar campus!) that I will happily share in future blogs. One memorable lesson that stuck from my U of T visit is that sometimes you need to jump into assessment and not get bogged down with over planning or over assessing how you will assess. Few perfect assessments or assessment strategies exist at inception, rather assessment processes and projects evolve over time. U of T jumped into their assessment work and empowered staff to utilize the tools in meaningful ways – all the while staying focused on improving the student experience.