Time professors spend improving their teaching

Abstract

Drexel University's outcomes experiment explored whether there is a correlation between time invested in improving teaching skills and a plausible measure of student learning. Voluntary participants were given a financial incentive to engage in self-selected teaching improvement activities. To receive the reward ($40 per hour, deposited into a discretionary account), they had to report their time spent on all activities related to improving their teaching in a selected course over multiple, clearly defined periods. The data collected over five years show that teaching improvement is a tiny part of most engineering professors' time use, even when there is a monetary incentive - the median reported was 0.5% of a normal work week, whereas we expected more than four times that amount based on extrapolations from national surveys. In interviews, participants reported that competing time demands simply made teaching-related professional development a luxury they could not afford, despite their interest and a financial incentive. This, in itself, says much about the culture in which engineering faculty operate.