This week:
- I point to some key findings in the newest annual National Survey of Student Engagement.
- I share readers’ feedback on how they have reformed their gateway courses.
- I ask whether your college or department has developed alternatives to teaching evaluations.
Some Good News on Engagement
The just-released National Survey of Student Engagement celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. In a look back, it has pulled out a few key trends suggesting that colleges have improved some measures of engagement. The survey was designed to better understand how undergraduates experience college, on the idea that it could help institutions improve student success.
For one, the percentage of first-year students who say they have discussed career plans and other topics outside of class with their professors increased 10 percentage points from 2004 to 2019.
“This suggests that by and large, faculty who teach first-year students have devoted more effort to having meaningful conversations with students outside of the classroom - a form of engagement that helps to socialize new students, promotes their persistence, and facilitates their ongoing development,” the survey notes. “It also suggests that institutions have intentionally structured orientations, career services, and support units to connect students to the resources they most need.”
An analysis of results from 57 colleges that used NSSE’s academic advising module found a clear correlation between the perceived quality of academic advising and a first-year student’s likelihood of returning to the college the following year. In short, the quality of advising seemed to matter more than the quantity. The survey found that first-year students who said they received high-quality advising also had twice as much interaction with professors and were more likely to say they planned to return the next year, compared with students who described their advising as low quality.
The survey, commonly known as NSSE, also found an increase in another measure of engagement. The proportion of first-year students who say they spent more than 15 hours a week on academic preparation grew from 34 percent in 2004 to 45 percent in 2017 (the figure has stayed relatively flat since then). That’s important, the survey’s authors note, because previous NSSE analysis found a correlation between time on preparation and retention and graduation rates.
Other highlights from the survey: