A message from Fiona Allan, Vice-President, Academic:

The voice of our students has always been an integral part of our efforts to continually improve upon program quality at Niagara College. During these uncertain pandemic years, feedback on the student experience is even more important.

In response, Niagara College developed and has been administering the annual Program Experience Survey (PES) since fall 2020, the year after the government ended its support of the province-wide student survey.

Today, I am pleased to introduce another tool that will allow for system-level benchmarking of key program indicators. The inaugural Ontario College Student Experience Survey (OCSES) is scheduled to launch on January 31 through February 18 with all 24 publicly funded colleges.

This new provincial survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete and includes three sections – teaching and learning quality, program-related knowledge and skills, and work integrated learning. A link will be distributed by email invitation to all students in regular programs except those in their first term.

The OCSES was developed through the collective efforts of Ontario’s colleges. A steering committee was established in 2020, along with working groups tasked with developing the various components of the survey and recommending a central administrator for this online survey.

At Niagara College, the survey will be supported by Planning and Institutional Research (PaIR) in collaboration with the Ontario College Application Service (OCAS), the survey administrator.

In an effort to optimize student response rates across all institution-wide surveys this term, the OCSES will be conducted in place of the winter administration of the PES. This will not affect the reliability of fall PES results, which achieved a representative sample in 2021.

OCSES reports will become available in spring 2022. If you have any questions regarding the survey, please contact Katerina Gonzalez, Director, Planning and Institutional Research.