Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE)
Overview
The Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE) is developed and managed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) to stimulate evidence-focused conversations about students’ engagement in university study. By providing information that is generalisable and sensitive to institutional diversity, the AUSSE plays an important role in helping institutions monitor and enhance the quality of education.
The AUSSE has introduced new and advanced survey methodologies into Australasian higher education. It involves administration of the state-of-the-art Student Engagement Questionnaire (SEQ) to a representative sample of first-year and later-year students at participating institutions. ACER has developed procedures to manage the quality of survey processes and hence the integrity of survey outcomes. Contemporary analytical methodologies are used to manage, analyse and report AUSSE data.
The AUSSE has formative links with the United States National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a collection developed in the mid-1990s and run in over 1,200 US and Canadian higher education institutions since then. AUSSE results can be benchmarked with NSSE results, providing powerful perspectives for internationally focused higher education institutions.
Value of the AUSSE
Student engagement is defined as students’ involvement in activities and conditions that are linked with high-quality learning. A key assumption is that learning is influenced by how an individual participates in educationally purposeful activities. While students are seen to be responsible for constructing their knowledge, learning is also seen to depend on institutions and staff generating conditions that stimulate student involvement.
Understanding and effectively managing students’ engagement in education plays a significant role in enhancing learning processes and outcomes. AUSSE data:
- provides real-time information on learning processes
- offers the most reliable proxy measures of learning outcomes
- provides excellent diagnostic measures for enhancement activities
- helps identify how to attract and, importantly, retain students
- can be benchmarked against international and institutional points of reference
- highlights the value of a university experience
- helps manage resources, and monitor programs and services
Development
The AUSSE was developed to bring together existing work in student engagement and leverage benefits from a collaborative, multi-institutional approach. It is critical that surveys involve valid instruments and processes so that they provide the kind of contextualised and high-quality data that can be used to improve practice. It is also critical to have well-tested strategies for embedding results into practice.
Development of the AUSSE is an ongoing process. A team of staff is led by Dr Hamish Coates at ACER. Guidance is provided by the AUSSE Advisory Group. NSSE provides input into survey design and development. Institutions play a formative and critical role in shaping AUSSE resources and methodologies, and in generating conversations about student engagement. The AUSSE will grow through workshops and seminars, institutional activities, formal reviews and publications.
An overview of the 2007 AUSSE development process and methodology is provided in the document below:
AUSSE 2007 Development and Methodology
Information
on AUSSE can also be downloaded as a PDF.