Panel discusses National Survey of Student Engagement and what it means for Penn State students

Using the results of the 2011 National Survey of Student Engagement, the panel reflected on what the conclusions meant for Penn State students. The National Survey of Student Engagement is a survey taken each year by thousands of students at hundreds of four-year universities in order to collect data about how students are spending their time at college. “It’s a huge survey that measures classroom and institutional activities that get students to actively participate in their educational experience and personal development,” Gyorke said.

The Survey reflects the amount of student interaction that occurs in and out of college classrooms. This helps Education Technology Services, Teaching and Learning with Technology, and the College of Liberal Arts determine how student engagement is expanding within the college environment and how technology can play a role within that growth.

The goal of the panel was to evaluate the survey’s results and investigate how students are interacting with one another and engaging in lessons in the classroom and in extra-curricular activities. “We (ETS) play a critical role as far as supplying some of the technologies that enable that to happen. We don’t supply a direct technology per say, but one of the offshoots of the things we supply is that it helps to engage folks in conversation beyond the classroom,” Swain said.

Student engagement is a very important concern both of the surveyors and of the University staff. Many different technological methods are used in order to promote student engagement in the classroom. “Many TLT (Teaching and Learning with Technology) projects are connected to student engagement factors in some way. For example, personal and course blogs are a way for students to write about what they are learning and create conversations with faculty and other students outside of class. Clickers are a way to create a feedback loop between students and faculty, even in large lecture courses. Our learning space designs, such as Media Commons spaces and Classroom and Lab Computing’s collaborative spaces, support study groups and collaborative projects,” Gyorke said.

Meanwhile, Richards said he utilizes a great deal of technology in his classroom setting, fostering student engagement and interaction at an exceptional level. He categorized the survey into three parts: what happens in the classroom, extra-curricular activities, and what happens in the larger extracurricular sense such as study abroad programs and internships. “I try to maximize all of those things for students. I want a dynamic in-class environment. The class is packed with activity,” noted Richards.

Covering the main aspects of the survey’s content, Richards’ class offers an active and energized classroom experience. “That’s a big part of the class; it’s U.S.-focused, it’s international-focused, and it’s interpersonally focused. It’s got every dimension that you can possibly imagine that those interpreting survey results conclude is important. That’s what I try to hit,” he said.

The panel covered many of the points that the National Survey of Student Engagement results revealed. Student engagement, in and out of the classroom, is developing because of what University faculty and staff are working to accomplish. “I have a copy of their measures of student engagement on my desk. It helps to remind of diverse student engagement programs such as collaborative research projects, community service, and study abroad experiences,” Gyorke stated in regards to ETS’s response to the survey.

Both ETS and Penn State faculty and staff are using the results of the National Survey of Student Engagement to understand the academic aspects of students’ lives, regardless of whether the advancement involves technology or not. “That’s one of the things that I like to stress and think our department does a good job at: it is that we are Education Technology Services and so it’s education first and then it’s technology that can support it,” added Swain. "The primary incentive is enhancing the students’ academic atmosphere here at Penn State."