Students at the University report a high level of academic challenge, according to the latest report of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), “Experiences That Matter: Enhancing Student Learning and Success,” released today (Nov. 5).
The annual NSSE report examines student experiences at colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. The most recent survey, conducted in 2006, covers 557 institutions of higher education. U-M has participated in the survey since its pilot year of 1999.
Administered to freshmen and seniors in the winter semester, the survey gauges students’ experiences inside and outside the classroom. It measures their engagement in various activities and how they manage their time, as well as their opinions about their school and how it has contributed to their knowledge, skills and personal development.
“Our students come to the University with a ‘get-involved’ attitude,” says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs. “We are well known as a university that strives to balance curricular and co-curricular learning, something we’ve been especially emphasizing in recent years with both the Office of Student Affairs and the Center for Research in Learning and Teaching cooperating to make the boundary between the two seamless.”
Now in its eighth year, the survey provides comparative standards for determining how effectively colleges are contributing to learning. Five key areas of educational performance are measured:
• Level of academic challenge
• Active and collaborative learning
• Student-faculty interaction
• Enriching educational experiences
• Supportive campus environment
U-M generally scored above the benchmark mean for its peer institutions across the categories, the report shows, especially in such areas as integration of ideas and diverse perspectives from a range of sources. This includes input from fellow students in class discussions, and through writing assignments and collaboration with other students in class projects.
Another finding indicates that U-M students spend less time memorizing things and more time analyzing, synthesizing, making judgments about and applying material from courses than do students at many other schools.
Findings from the national survey show that taking part in certain activities during college boosts students’ performance in many areas, such as thinking critically, solving real world problems, and working effectively with others. These “high-impact” activities include learning communities, undergraduate research, study abroad, internships and capstone projects.
There has been an increase in student organizations, Monts says, that goes beyond making social connections to turning what students learn in the classroom to tangible benefits to their community. “There are groups active in student mental health and peer counseling, tutoring school children and many other such activities. This shows up in the NSSE survey of Michigan students,” he says.
An example of this is the new student group Inter-Humanitarian Council, which aims to network various student humanitarian organizations into one formal collaborative body, says Maize Pages, the University’s online directory of student organizations.
For access to the national report and more information about the NSSE, go to nsse.iub.edu.
