One of the important things to do with your PSOL data is to look at the gaps – the differences between the importance ratings and the satisfaction ratings expressed by the students. You’re always concerned about the larger gaps which indicate where you have significant room for improvement, if it is an item where you [...]
I’ve been asked to supply some data backing up my claim that students place a low level of importance on the idea of developing a sense of community in their e-learning opportunities. I have spoken about this at various times, including three days ago during a keynote presentation about the myths and realities of e-Learning [...]
Question 55 on the PSOL is one of three “Summary” questions that are placed near the end of the survey. Question 55 is a difficult question to make sense out of. It reads as follows: “So far, how has your college experience met your expectations?”
An earlier version of the survey appears to have included a [...]
The chart below shows some of the normal differences that you can expect to see in the satisfaction levels of different groups of students.
These four questions were among the top rated as far as importance for Lake Superior College students in the FY06 survey administration. The chart indicates the satisfaction scores on these four important [...]
For the PSOL, Noel-Levitz creates five categories from the 26 core items that have both a satisfaction and importance score. Those five categories are:
Academic services (7)
Enrollment services (4)
Institutional perceptions (2)
Instructional services (8)
Student services (5)
In each of these categories, there are two or more questions (indicated in parentheses above) that are combined to create the aggregate [...]
I posted recently about our 13-school peer comparison group for the 2006 PSOL and how this would be our best group for benchmarking since they are all two year schools. It is also necessary to look a little deeper to make sure that the respondents are similar so I compared the demographics of the two [...]
PSOL Strengths for Lake Superior College
Our 2006 Institutional report for the Noel-Levitz PSOL identified the following strengths for LSC Online (listed in rank order beginning with the strongest item).
I’ve had a few discussions with Noel-Levitz representatives about how I think the “strengths” need to be redefined. Right now the strengths are what I would call [...]
On September 13, 2006, I received new data from Noel-Levitz regarding the PSOL (Priorities Survey for Online Learners) that we gave for the third year in a row during spring semester 2006. The data have always been useful but the report received today is the most useful for benchmarking that we have ever received.
Coming [...]
In July 2006 I attended the annual Noel-Levitz conference in Denver. The first day was a client workshop on the various N-L surveys of student satisfaction and importance, such as the SSI (Student Satisfaction Inventory) and the PSOL (Priorities Survey for Online Learners). They had just updated the overall results for the PSOL. [...]