12 Enrollment Management Journal Winter 2008 Bigger Can Be Better: Using the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to Examine the Relationship Between Good Practice and Undergraduate Outcomes at a Large Research University

This study examines students ' reports of their satisfaction and their institution's contribution to their learning based on responses to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) from 1,536 first-year and senior students at a large, research-extensive university in the spring of 2004. The results suggest that high expectations and prompt feedback on academic performance are most strongly related to students ' self-reports of their institution's contribution to analytic thinking and that prompt feedback on academic performance is most strongly related to student satisfaction—also a proxy for persistence—after controlling for entering student aptitude and other background characteristics. The consideration of multiple best practices simultaneously may improve our understanding of the most critical combination of practices and the unique contributions of each to learning, student satisfaction, and the likelihood of persistence. The implications for research and practice are discussed. Student engagement is an established concept in the research literature andthe national conversation regarding higher education quality and theimpact of college attendance on students (Ku & Hu, 2001a; Kuh, 2001; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2001; Pike, 2004; Pike, Kuh, & Gonyea, 1993). It is most evident in the creation and growth of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) as a means to gauge “process indicators” of academic quality that are rooted in best practices and experiences that are related to student learning and development (Astin, 1993; Kuh, 2003; Pace, 1984; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991a, 1991b). Given the persistent and growing dissatisfaction among various publics and the government with the limitations of and lack of actionable information gained from purely “resource an