OLLI at TTU Annual Survey Shows Positive Trends and Areas for Improvement

By Tina Crowson, Coordinator OLLI at TTU, Lubbock

In May, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Texas Tech University members in all communities were given the opportunity to offer feedback on a variety of OLLI program aspects such as curriculum, classrooms and class times. This is the third year that the OLLI staff has partnered with the Texas Tech University Department of Institutional Research to construct and conduct a survey to measure member satisfaction with the program.

The 2019 response rate was nearly 45%, which is higher than responses for each of the previous years. "We are grateful to our members for taking the time to give us their feedback," said Shelby Crews, director of OLLI at Texas Tech University. "The information that we glean from this survey is invaluable in helping us determine potential classes, topics that members are interested in and even what times of day they would like to come to class. It also gives us a picture of who our members are, ages, education, working or retired, and how we can better serve their needs."

Some areas that the program was graded well on were the variety of classes held and the quality of the instruction provided. However, technology issues both in the office and the classroom and in getting the word out to the communities continues to be a struggle.

"These are areas that we knew had been problematic in the past and didn't come as total surprises. Now we can work together with our members to improve all areas of programming, especially the technology issues," said Crews. "Our first step is forming a technology task force that will analyze the technology that we have in place, put together a list of what the ideal technology would look like and help us determine how to implement those things that we can."

If you are technologically savvy and would be interested in serving on this task force, email Crews at shelby.crews@ttu.edu.

To read the entire survey results from your OLLI area, click on the link below.
Abilene Survey Results
Fredericksburg Survey Results
Highland Lakes Survey Results
Lubbock Survey Results