Engaged Learning Gaining Traction, New NSSE Survey Finds

The 2009 report from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), Assessment for Improvement: Tracking Student Engagement Over Time, finds compelling evidence that, contrary to popular wisdom, improvements in engaged learning are not limited to small colleges. The study tracked institutions’ gains in different types of engaged learning activities over time, and found that institutions of all types—from small private colleges to large public research universities—saw significant gains in at least one measure of engaged learning for first-year students, seniors, or both.  In addition to its standard questions about student participation in “high-impact” educational practices like first-year seminars and undergraduate research, the 2009 survey collected information about transfer students and students in the STEM fields to help understand whether these students are gaining access to engaged learning practices at the same or similar rates as other student subgroups.  The survey, now in its tenth year of administration, was conducted in spring 2009 at 617 U.S. baccalaureate-granting institutions and included more than 360,000 randomly sampled students.

FINDINGS

Improvement over Time

• Forty-one percent of institutions that participated in at least four past NSSE survey administrations demonstrated improvement in at least one learning area for first-year students, and 28 percent demonstrated improvement for seniors.
• Doctoral-granting institutions showed the greatest improvement in engaged learning for first-year students (52 percent of schools studied showed improvement in at least one area), followed by baccalaureate colleges (41 percent improvement)
• Large institutions (those with 5,000-9,999 students) showed greater improvement in engaged learning measures over time (46 percent improved) than medium (45 percent), very large (44 percent), and small schools (36 percent).

Transfer Students

• Both horizontal transfers (from other four-year schools) and vertical transfers (from two-year schools) lagged behind their “native” nontransfer peers in participation in engaged learning activities.
• Study abroad showed the biggest participation gap between transfer and nontransfer students—20 percent of native students studied abroad, while only 15 percent of horizontal transfers and 7 percent of vertical transfers did.
• Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of native students participated in an internship, compared with only 43 percent of vertical transfers.

Students in STEM Disciplines

• STEM-major students were much more likely than their non-STEM-major peers to report learning gains in interpreting results from experiments, surveys, or field research (66 percent versus 37 percent).
• Non-STEM students more frequently asked questions in class and made class presentations, while STEM students more frequently taught or tutored other students and worked with classmates outside of class to prepare assignments.
• About one-third of non-STEM students reported writing five or more papers that discussed methods and data (31 percent), compared with 44 percent of STEM students.
  

The entire report is available as a PDF.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Men were less likely than women to participate in any high-impact educational practices (43 percent versus 57 percent among seniors.)
• Forty-one percent of commuter schools showed improvement from earlier surveys in the area of student-faculty interaction for first-year students.
• More than 50 percent of students frequently had serious conversations with students of a different race or ethnicity, while only about 14 percent never had these types of conversations.