Faculty Survey of Student Engagement

The Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) is designed to measure faculty expectations of student engagement in educational practices that are empirically linked with high levels of learning and development. The survey also collects information about how faculty members spend their time related to professorial activities and the kinds of learning experiences their institution emphasizes.

Murray State University first participated in 2005.

Selected Results from 2005 FSSE

Faculty members expect students to study about twice as much as students actually reported. In addition, faculty members in the Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Biological/Life Sciences reported more per class study time than other subject areas.

Across disciplines, full-time faculty respondents devote about 58% of their time to teaching-related activities (e.g. time in class, grading), 17% of their time to research and scholarly activities, and 25% of their time to other activities (e.g., advising, service).

The average amount of time spent on all of these professorial activities varies by discipline from 55 hours per week in the Physical Sciences to 63 hours per week in Education.

The average faculty member reports spending more than 40% of class time lecturing, 14% on small group work, and a bit more than 10% on experiential activities such as labs and field work. The remainder is spent on a variety of activities (e.g., instructor led discussions, student presentations).

In general, the FSSE 2005 schools are similar in many ways to the national profile of four-year colleges and universities. There are a few places where the FSSE 2005 profile deviates from the national profile. Compared to all four-year institutions, a greater percentage of FSSE 2005 institutions were Master's and Doctoral/Research Intensive and a smaller percentage were Baccalaureate institutions (Liberal Arts or General). Public four-year institutions are over represented compared to the national pool of all four-year institutions. Also, FSSE schools were overrepresented in the Southeast region and slightly underrepresented in the Mideast and New England. Doctoral/Research and Master's institutions enroll more than three-quarters of all undergraduates and employ over 80% of all faculty. At the same time, ample numbers of smaller institutions participated in FSSE 2005, insuring that the results reflect a broad cross-section of faculty from across the nation.