College pushes for participation in provincial student survey

A poster by Loyalist about the KPI surveys. Sourced, Loyalist College Facebook

By Bradley Bennett

BELLEVILLE – Organizers of the Loyalist College promotional campaign to raise awareness of a provincial student survey are hoping it will help improve services, show off its strengths, as well as get students jobs.

Over several weeks in early February, the college held multiple special events, put up posters, tri-fold cards on tables in commons areas and offered free pizza.

Laura Naumann, the college registrar, said this is the first year the college is trying to raise awareness about the surveys since it began in 1999.

“[They’ve] been finding the last few years, students think they’ve already done it…,” she said. “The colleges were mandated to develop curriculum and programs that will help you get a career when you finish.”

Every year all the colleges in Ontario hand out a survey know as the key performance indicators also referred to as KPI. These surveys are done by all students and grads and measure the graduation rate, student, and grad satisfaction.

The surveys, done by Colleges Ontario, the provincial advocacy group, help Loyalist gather feedback about the school in general and how it can change to keep up with the evolving needs of students and employers.

The college can look at the overall results across the province, as well as on a departmental basis at Loyalist.

With the provincial college demographic on a decline and schools across Ontario struggling for funding, it is a starting to become more and more important to make sure students want to come to college and Loyalist in particular.

Loyalist has traditionally done well on several aspects of this survey, but some students take these statistics lightly.

Second-year construction renovation student David Neilson thinks the surveys are good. because they narrow down what we could

“It definitely narrows down what we could changed, and what could be changed in a program or the school system itself,” he said.

Hayley Tran, a second-year Justice Studies student, over the past three years she has attended the college, there is not much change. And, the questionaire doesn’t allow for an accurate reflection of her thoughts.

“It doesn’t really give you many options,”

The survey uses multiple choice questions, and you can’t give the answers you want, she said.

This chart shows the Grads satisfaction rate vs. the student satisfaction rate over the last 16 years.

Eric Bauer, a representative of the Loyalist College of Ontario Public Service Union, said that he thinks the student’ voice is an important one as a stakeholder in the future of the college.

He also questions the methodology and purpose of the survey. In an email interview, Bauer said the methods use must match the research goals in general.

“As I don’t know the ultimate purpose of KPI surveying, it is impossible to answer if this is ‘the best way to gather feedback about student satisfaction.’,”

Graduation rate since 2000