2002 SUCCEED Faculty Survey of Teaching Practices and Perceptions of Institutional Attitudes toward Teaching
Author: Brawner, Catherine E.
Date: 2003-12-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Surveys,Teaching Methods,Teacher Attitudes,Active Learning,Homework,Engineering Education,Teamwork,Educational Technology,Faculty Development,Educational Quality,Teacher Competencies,Teacher Characteristics,Gender Differences,Employment Level,Teaching Experience,Seminars,Workshops,Conferences (Gatherings),Educational Innovation,Learning Activities,Assignments,Student Attitudes,Academic Rank (Professional),Lecture Method,Demonstrations (Educational),Cooperative Learning,Classification,Planning,Time,Feedback (Response),Teacher Behavior,Program Effectiveness,Teacher Collaboration,Undergraduate Students,Graduate Students

SUCCEED (Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education) is an eight-campus coalition of engineering schools formed in 1992 under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation. In 1997, a faculty survey of instructional practices and attitudes regarding the climate for teaching on the Coalition campuses was designed and administered. This report presents the results from the third and last survey administration in 2002, following the 1997 (ED428607) and 1999 (ED461510) surveys. Respondents were asked about the frequency with which they used various teaching techniques (including active learning, team homework, and technology-assisted instruction), their involvement in faculty development programs, and the effects of those programs on their teaching. They were also asked to rate the importance of teaching quality to themselves, their colleagues, and their department, college, and university administrators and in the faculty reward system on their campus. The 2002 survey was sent by e-mail in March 2002 to 1589 faculty e-mail addresses, and a follow-up survey was sent a month later to non-respondents. 375 valid and usable surveys were returned, a return rate of 24%. Of those, 46 were excluded from most analyses (except for demographic summaries) because the respondent had not taught undergraduates in the prior three years. The demographic profile of the respondents closely matched that of the full faculty with respect to sex, rank, position, engineering discipline, and participation in SUCCEED-sponsored activities. This report summarizes results from the 2002 administration of the survey and itemizes significant differences among groups (sex, rank, position, years of service, SUCCEED involvement, prior attendance at teaching seminars, and Carnegie classification). When possible, the data are compared with the data from the 1997 and 1999 survey administrations to examine changes in faculty teaching practices and attitudes in the intervening years. While SUCCEED's faculty development effort cannot claim exclusive credit for the increased use of the instructional methods it has sought to promote from 1997-2002, it clearly had a major effect in accomplishing the increase, and the faculty who adopted or increased their use of the new methods overwhelmingly believed that the effects of the changes on their teaching were positive. From the point of view of the survey respondents the climate for teaching on their campuses moderately but steadily declined during the period 1997-2002 and there was consistently little support for the use of innovative teaching methods or high quality teaching. Two appendices provide: (1) Survey Instrument; and (2) Survey Summary by Institution. (Contains 105 tables and 6 figures.)