The College Expectations Student Questionnaire (CESQ) has been used by UNK as a primary assessment tool for the new first-year program at UNK. The questionnaire assesses what incoming freshman expect their activities to be (1 is low, 4 is high) and compares those expectations to the same questions in the spring of the their first year. Basically, the CESQ asks the question "Was UNK what you expected it to be?"
The CESQ has been administered to one incoming class (beginning in fall 2002) and data collection is planned for this year. The complete set of questions are presented in Appendix B.
A comparison of the Summer 2002 averages to the Spring 2003 averages reveals whether student expectations were met. Some of the observations from these data are:
- Students were surprised at some of the technical aspects of writing, even though they expected to use a word processor, had others read their writing, referred to a writing manual, and revised a paper 2 or more times.
- Integration of material seemed to be less than expected.
- Students seemed to interact with faculty less than expected.
| Reading, Writing and College Opinion |
Sum 2002 |
Spr 2003 |
Sum 2003 |
Scores= 1 (none); 2 (fewer than 5); 3 (between 5-10);
4 (between 10-20); 5 (more than 20) |
|
| # of non assigned books read |
2.5 |
1.81 |
2.53 |
| # of texts read |
3.67 |
2.89 |
3.69 |
| # of term papers |
3.67 |
3.55 |
3.65 |
| # of essays |
3.7 |
3.13 |
3.67 |
| Score 1-4: 1=won't like; 4=really like it |
|
| How well will you like college |
3.3 |
6.25**** |
3.31 |
| **** Overall opinion of college: |
| Combined score with scale of 2-8 |
n=881 |
n=413 |
n=906 |
The last section of data from the CESQ revealed that only the number of term papers came relatively close the expectation that they had in the summer before starting school. Overall, satisfaction with college was high (6.26 on an 8-point scale.)