Message from Fiona Allan, vice president, Academic
I am pleased to share that the final results from the inaugural Program Experience Survey are now available and that they reflect positively for Niagara College while identifying areas where we can continue to grow and improve.
Introduced in October of last year, the Program Experience Survey (PES) was created to help us gather data and important feedback from students for use in continuous improvement and program reviews. It was administered in fall and winter to measure student perceptions in three areas of program quality – essential employability skills, vocational learning outcomes and course electives.
Fall respondents comprised the pre-COVID cohort (returning students), while winter respondents were mid-COVID students (enrolled in their program for the first time after the pandemic had started).
Highlights include:
- 90% of respondents were satisfied with the knowledge and skills they are learning for future careers (89% in fall, 92% in winter).
- 87% agreed that their programs are developing their ability to work with others (89% in fall, 83% in winter).
- 94% reported their programs are helping them develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills (93% in fall, 95% in winter).
- Almost 90% felt that program faculty and staff support their success (88% in fall, 90% in winter).
- 88% of respondents reported that their programs develop diversity competency skills (87% in fall, 89% in winter).
- 83% were satisfied with the quality of applied and/or work integrated learning (80% in fall, 86% in winter).
- 86% were happy with the connection of theory to applied and hands-on aspects of their learning experience (84% in fall, 89% in winter).
Survey results are reliable given the strong completion rate of 23.9% (1,949 students of 8,153 invited) with a margin of error of +/-1.9%, 19 times out of 20 (24.2% fall, 23.6% winter). Notable differences between the cohorts were:
- eLearning. Overall, 74% of students were satisfied with the quality of eLearning. The mid-COVID cohort was significantly more satisfied with the quality of eLearning compared to the pre-COVID cohort (82% vs 69% respectively). This can be attributed to the intentional increase in synchronous online delivery in the winter term and the additional workshops and online training for faculty to support eLearning during the pandemic.
- Electives. The winter term also saw an increase in online delivery of elective courses, which resulted in 76% of the mid-COVID cohort reporting satisfaction with the selection of electives available at the college compared to 65% of the pre-COVID cohort.
- Recommend program. Finally, the mid-COVID cohort was 5% more likely to recommend their program to peers than their pre-COVID counterparts, mainly due to higher satisfaction levels among international students in healthcare programs (88% of mid-COVID respondents said they were likely to recommend vs 83% pre-COVID).
Niagara College faced many obstacles over the last year and I would like to thank all of you, our delivery and services teams, for continuing to provide excellent services, opportunities and learning environments for our students who faced many uncertainties this past year. Your hard work and dedication is evident through the results of the Program Experience Survey.
Program-level results have been shared with deans and associate deans. If you have questions regarding the survey, please contact Katerina Gonzalez, director, Planning and Institutional Research at [email protected].
For background information on this survey, click here.
For student FAQs regarding the survey, click here.
