Why SENSE?
The Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE), a product and service of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, helps community colleges discover why some entering students persist and succeed and others do not.
Administered during the 4th and 5th weeks of the fall academic term, SENSE asks students to reflect on their earliest experiences (academic and services-related) with the college. SENSE serves as a complementary piece to the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), with a more narrowed focus on early student experiences.
Quick Links
Would you like to learn more about SENSE? Here are some links to get you started:
- Overview
- Survey Instrument
- Annotated Bibliography
- National Findings
- Member Colleges
- Pricing and Participation
- Annual Registration
- Tools
- Survey Administration
For more information about the Center and its projects, select one of the tabs in the upper-left corner of the website.
The Center website will experience some down time May 21st and 22nd due to server maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Attend the 2012 Center Workshop!
The 2012 Center Workshop, devoted this year to the collective effort of identifying and promoting high-impact educational practices in community colleges, will offer several hands-on breakout sessions offered by Center staff and college colleagues, as well as a plenary luncheon with Vincent Tinto.
Registration for the workshop is required for lunch and refreshments. Walk-in registration may be available, but seating is very limited and lunch is not guaranteed. Please review the agenda.
The workshop is an annual training and networking event hosted by the Center and held concurrently with the NISOD Annual International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence.
CCSSE 2013 Registration Now Open
Do you want to make a difference in student learning and retention at your college? The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) affords colleges a great opportunity to ascertain how they are doing in those areas that matter most. Registration for the 2013 administration of CCSSE is underway and will remain open until November 1, or the point at which membership reaches 350 colleges.
Before registering, please review information about pricing, adding custom special-focus items, and other membership options.
In addition to the regular CCSSE survey instrument, colleges participating in the 2013 administration will receive—free of charge—an additional special-focus item set composed of 20 key items pertaining to promising practices in community colleges. These items are part of a new Center initiative, Identifying and Promoting High-Impact Educational Practices in Community Colleges. If your college opts to add custom survey items to your administration, your college will receive the first five promising practices items, in addition to your custom survey items.
SENSE 2012 Survey Administration Now Underway
The 2012 Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) administration, with 152 participating colleges across thirty-four states, the District of Columbia, the Marshall Islands, and Vancouver, marks the second year of a large-scale initiative focused on identifying and promoting high-impact educational practices in community colleges.
As part of the High-Impact Practices Initiative, in addition to the regular SENSE survey instrument, many SENSE 2012 colleges are administering a special-focus module comprised of key items pertaining to potential high-impact practices in community colleges. These items explore information about entering students' experiences associated with promising educational practices such as early registration, freshman seminars, and early alert systems.
Initiative work will continue in the way of this special-focus module with SENSE in 2013. Registration will open November 1, 2012.
The Center Releases Expanded Tools
Center staff have recently updated and expanded tools for member colleges. The Tools page contains multiple resources for colleges to use while preparing for a SENSE administration, communicating about survey results, and working with those results to improve student engagement.
Among the tools on the Preparing for Administration page is a talking point document to share with faculty and staff and a sample participant news release to communicate information about an upcoming administration with the college community at large.
The Working with Results page contains tools for colleges to use as they begin to explore their SENSE data, including a data narrative exercise. This tool can be used in a group setting to develop a data-driven story that takes shape as data are shared and discussed.
The Sharing Results page houses several key communication templates, including a Drop-In Overview Report template and a Drop-In Overview Presentation template, both customizable for colleges to use when sharing SENSE results.
The Accreditation Guides suggest ways for institutions to incorporate SENSE into regional accreditation and include suggested timelines for administering SENSE as part of the accreditation process and a map that links SENSE data to regional standards.
The Focus Group Toolkit contains materials for organizing focus groups as well as sample focus group discussion guides for entering students, returning students, faculty, and student services staff.