2006 National Survey of Student Engagement Highlights Purposeful Educational Practices

The 2006 annual report of the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE), Engaged Learning: Fostering Success for All Students, includes a wealth of data about how student engagement—in and outside of the classroom—affects learning. Students who are involved in reflective learning activities or in high-impact educational practices like learning communities tend to perform better in college and are more likely to persist, the survey found. Moreover, students from historically underserved groups experience greater benefits from engaged learning practices than do their peers—benefits that produce what the NSSE report calls a “compensatory effect.” The report also notes that AAC&U, through its Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) campaign, is promoting such engaged learning by focusing attention on purposeful educational practices that colleges can use to improve student achievement of essential learning outcomes.

This year’s NSSE data were drawn from the responses of nearly 260,000 first-year and senior students at 523 four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. Other highlights of the 2006 report include findings about adult and distance learner engagement and about differences in forms of engagement between men and women.

FINDINGS

Engagement and Student Learning

• Student engagement is positively related to first-year and senior student grades and to persistence between the first and second year of college.
• Students from historically underserved groups experience greater benefits from engaged learning practices, in terms of grades and persistence, than their peers
• On average, women spend more time preparing for class and are more likely to volunteer, while men are more likely to interact with faculty members outside of class and to tutor other students.
• Four out of five beginning college students expected that reflective learning—learning that helps students understand other perspectives, that challenges their existing views, and that compels them to examine the underlying meaning of information—would be a part of their first-year experience.

Enriching Experiences

• Sixteen percent of freshmen and 25 percent of seniors reported having participated in a learning community or similar program.
• Thirty-two percent of seniors said that they had completed a culminating senior project such as a capstone course or a senior thesis, and 29 percent said they planned to do such a project.
• Eighty percent of freshmen said they planned to do or had done a practicum, internship, field experience, co-op experience, or clinical assignment; 53 percent of seniors reported having done such work, and 23 percent said they planned to do it.
• Thirty-seven percent of freshmen and 59 percent of seniors said that they had participated in community service or volunteer work.
• Three percent of freshmen and 14 percent of seniors reported having studied abroad.
• Fifty-four percent of freshmen and 62 percent of seniors said they “often” or “very often” used an electronic medium to discuss or complete an assignment.

Engaged Learning: Fostering Success for All Students can be downloaded or purchased from NSSE. More information about the LEAP campaign is available on AAC&U’s Web site.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Students spend on average only thirteen to fourteen hours a week preparing for class, far below what faculty say is necessary.
• Students study less during the first year of college than they expected to at the start of the academic year.
• Compared with campus-based students, distance learners report greater developmental gains from college.