Issue link: http://ncumarketing.uberflip.com/i/1111579
Elaine Willerton, PhD | Assessment Director, SSBS Gallup Alumni Survey – Examining the Outcomes and Experiences of NCU Graduate Alumni Last December during the end-of-year retreat, Dean James Billings shared some select findings from the Gallup alumni survey. The full report, by Gallup, was recently released. If you haven't looked it over yet, you will definitely want to explore the highlights, https://ncu.edu/images/NCU_Gallup_Alumni_Survey_2018.pdf. For some insights on the process of working with Gallup on this survey and what the results mean for us at NCU, I reached out to NCU Vice President of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness, Ray Rodriguez for a little Q&A. Q: Why did NCU decide to work with Gallup on this alumni survey? A: The Office of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness was interested in working with Gallup for a few reasons. First, although we deploy internal surveys to measure a number of things, we always look to find validated instruments and external validation, especially when there is comparison data. This is the reason that we use the Noel-Levitz Priority Survey of Online Learners (PSOL) to measure student perceptions of the institution. As you know, we do an internal alumni survey regularly, but we sought to find deeper meaning in quality of life measures for which Gallup has validated and well-respected scales. In addition, Gallup has a national database of responses from other schools that would give us a sense of how we compare to other similarly situated institutions. The hope was that results would help us with our thinking about Meaning, Quality, and Integrity of Degrees and find avenues of continuous improvement. One of the interesting discussions was selecting our comparison groups. Because there are so few responses in 100% online graduate programs, we chose a half plus online group to achieve inferential viability. We chose a WASC accredited graduate school group for relevance within our region. We also picked Code 18 Carnegie, the national database of schools with our basic and graduate program classification, which, by the way, were recently changed to Doctoral/Professional University and Research Doctoral – Professional Dominant. We chose this group to see where we stood within our segment of the academy in the U.S. Q: Which finding(s) surprised you the most? A: LOL. After I read the results – twice – I thought, "It's a good thing this report didn't come out of my office, no one would believe it." In most measures, NCU alumni results were significantly better than our comparison groups. For me, it goes a long way toward putting to rest the notion that online education is somehow inferior. The results are a testament to the hard work and quality of faculty and support staff in making an impact, not only on achievement of academic goals of our students, but also the value-added factors. I was especially gratified with the results on the measures of well-being, knowing that beyond transactional work-related successes, you all provide a basis for personal fulfillment. As educators, we can aspire to no higher purpose.