Some additional items address
other important aspects of how students spend their time
and what the institution asks them to do, which directly
and indirectly affect their engagement. The results discussed
in this section are not presented in a table but are available
from the NSSE website. The five items about the extent
to which the institution emphasizes different kinds of
mental activities represent some of the skills in Bloom's
(1956) taxonomy of educational objectives. The standardized
alpha for these items is .70 when the lowest order mental
function item, memorization, is included. However, the
alpha jumps to .80 after deleting the memorization item.
This set of items is among the best predictors of self-reported
gains, suggesting that the items are reliably estimating
the degree to which the institution is challenging students
to perform higher order intellectual tasks.
Patterns of correlations among these items are consistent
with what one would expect. For example, the item related
to the number of hours spent preparing for class is positively
related to several questions surrounding academic rigor
such as the number of assigned course readings (.25),
coursework emphasis on analyzing ideas and theories (.16)
and synthesizing information and experiences (.16), the
number of mid-sized (5-19 pages) written papers (.15),
and the challenging nature of exams (.21). Likewise, the
number of assigned readings is predictably related to
the number of small (.24) and mid-sized (.29) papers written.
Interestingly, the quality of academic advising is positively
correlated with the four higher order mental activities,
analyzing (.15), synthesizing (.17), evaluating (.15),
and applying (.17), and is also positively related to
the challenging nature of examinations (.20).
The set of educational program experiences (e.g., internships,
study abroad, community service, working with a faculty
member on a |
research project) have an
alpha of .52. Working on a research project with a faculty
member is positively related to independent study (.27),
culminating senior experiences (.25), and writing papers
of 20 pages or more (.15). Also, students who had taken
foreign language coursework were more likely to study
abroad (.24). It=s worth mentioning that the national
College Student Experiences Questionnaire database shows
that the proportion of students saying they have worked
on research with a faculty member has actually increased
since the late 1980s, suggesting that collaboration on
research may be increasingly viewed and used as a desirable,
pedagogically effective strategy (Kuh & Siegel, 2000;
Kuh, Vesper, Connolly, & Pace, 1997).
Finally, the time usage items split into two sets of activities,
three that are positively correlated with other aspects
of engagement and educational and personal gains (academic
preparation, extracurricular activities, work on campus)
and three items that are either not correlated or are
negatively associated with engagement (socializing, work
off campus, caring for dependents). Less than 1% of full-time
students reported a total of more than 100 hours across
all six time allocation categories. Three quarters of
all students reported spending an average of between 35
and 80 hours a week engaged in these activities plus attending
class. Assuming that full-time students are in class about
15 hours per week and sleep another 55 hours or so a week,
the range of 105 to 150 hours taken up in all these activities
out of a 168-hour week appears reasonable.
A few of these items have out-of-range but explainable
skewness and kurtosis indicators. They include the number
of hours spent working on campus (72% work five or fewer
hours per week), the number of papers of 20 pages or more
(66% said "none"), number of non-assigned books
read (78% said fewer than 5), and the number of hours
students spend caring for dependents (78% reported 5 or
fewer hours). |
