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Committee will follow up on student survey | |
| By Chuck Toney |
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| During
fall semester 2003, President Michael F. Adams and Provost Arnett
Mace held a series of meetings
with small groups of faculty to discuss issues of concern and interest
to the faculty and to offer an administrative perspective. Out of
those meetings came a request by the faculty for more regular communication
from the senior administration. This article in Columns
is part of a series which will address administrative goals and priorities. The University of Georgia participated in the National Survey of Student Engagement for the first time in the spring of 2003. The NSSE is headquartered at Indiana University and was launched with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The survey’s Web site (www.indiana.edu/~nsse/index.htm) says it is “designed to obtain, on an annual basis, information from scores of colleges and universities nationwide about student participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development.”
“The work of this committee is helping address one of the critical questions we face at UGA: Has the rigor of the curriculum here kept pace with the increasing quality of the student body?” says Adams. “I am impressed with what the committee has done so far, and I look forward to the results of its efforts.” “The NSSE is widely recognized as a reliable instrument for gauging whether what we are doing in the classroom and across the campus at UGA is accomplishing the goal of engaging students in learning,” says Del Dunn, vice president for instruction. “It points out both strengths and weaknesses, and we will use what we learn to maintain our strengths and improve on our weaknesses.” UGA was among 437 colleges and universities taking part in the survey in the spring of 2003, with results available in the fall of that year; 1,500 seniors and 1,500 freshmen were invited to participate at UGA. Nationally, more than 130,000 freshmen and seniors answered questions about academic challenge, ways they study and learn, their interactions with faculty and other students, the campus environment and other aspects of their educational experience. The survey found that students here are generally more pleased with their educational experience than their counterparts at other major research institutions, and would be much more likely than their peers to attend the same school if they started college over again. In addition, UGA freshmen and seniors take more foreign language courses and participate in study-abroad programs more often, and they get along better with other students than freshmen and seniors at other schools. But the survey also found areas for improvement, and those are the areas that Crowther’s committee is addressing. In particular, it found that UGA students spend less time studying and preparing for class than their counterparts at comparable universities. Beginning in December 2003 and continuing through April 2004, Dunn and members of the committee held a series of “NSSE Conversations” with 11 groups and more than 250 people representing all facets of the learning environment. “What we heard was deep concern and interest about how UGA can do a better job of helping students learn,” says Crowther. “While all the concerns are important, two cut across both the NSSE data and the campus conversations: writing and service learning.” The committee found that while both faculty and students consider writing one of the most important skills in the classroom and for after graduation, students at UGA receive fewer writing assignments than students at comparable institutions. Service learning is an instructional methodology that integrates “doing” with “learning.” Among the recommendations that the committee has made to Adams is a year-long campus conversation about teaching and learning involving faculty, staff and students. While the topics of writing and service learning will be the focus of the conversations, participants may bring up any topic which affects the quality of the learning experience at UGA. Additionally, the committee proposes two faculty fellows to provide leadership, one to coordinate writing efforts across campus and one to coordinate service learning. The NSSE committee’s work parallels in some ways the work of a task force on general education and student learning recently appointed by Mace. The purview of the task force includes questions related to the university’s intellectual climate, how students learn and should learn in today’s academic environment, and whether UGA’s general education requirements remain innovative, engaging for undergraduate students, and provide the most effective overall education for them. Dunn and Associate Provost Jere Morehead are co-chairs. The task force held its first meeting on Oct. 5. The group will operate during both fall and spring semesters this year and complete a final report by late spring or summer of 2005. UGA will administer the NSSE again during the 2005–06 academic year. |
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