Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE)

Findings from the AUSSE

What is the AUSSE?

The Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE) is an annual survey of students and staff enrolled in Australian and New Zealand universities and other higher education and tertiary education institutions. The AUSSE incorporates the Student Engagement Questionnaire (SEQ), a survey of undergraduate and tertiary students, the Postgraduate Survey of Student Engagement (POSSE), a survey of postgraduate coursework students and the Staff Student Engagement Survey (SSES), a survey of academic staff.

Over the past five years the AUSSE has been administered at over 60 institutions across Australasia. Over 150,000 undergraduate students, postgraduate coursework students and academic staff have completed the AUSSE, POSSE or SSES surveys since 2007 making the AUSSE one of the largest surveys of higher and tertiary education students and staff.

The idea of student engagement captures how students interact with their institutions, and how institutions can support student learning. Both of these things are important for high-quailty education. Your institution can use AUSSE data to improve students' experience and outcomes. The AUSSE provides your institution with information on important things like:

students' experiences and activities
the interactions students have with staff and other students
students' future study intentions
students' perceptions of the values and quality of their institution
student demographics

The AUSSE is managed by the Austrailan Council for Educational Research (ACER), an independent and not-for-profit organisation, and is conducted in close collaboration with participating institutions. Further information about the AUSSE and the publications that result from this annual survey can be found at: http://www.acer.edu.au/research/ausse/.

Findings from the 2011 AUSSE

The AUSSE provides information on students' involvement with learning, their experiences and activities. Australasian students spend an average of 10 hours preparing for class every week, and 10% of students spend more than 20 hours studying. In a typical week, Australasian students complete an average of three assignments that take less than an hour each to complete and 87% of students complete at least one assignment that takes more than an hour to complete.

74% of students say that they keep up-to-date in their studies most of the time, and only 8% of students say they 'never' complete readings or assignments for class.

Study is not the only part of students' lives keeping them busy, most students work, and many students are involved in extracurricular activities and spend time caring for their family. 69% of Australasian students work for pay, and working students work an average of two hours each week on-campus and 17 hours each week off-campus. On average, each week students spend 14 hours on campus, five hours travelling to-and-from campus, three hours participating in extracurricular activities, eight hours caring for dependents, nine hours managing personal business (such as housework, shopping and exercising) and 11 hours relaxing and socialising.

Students are also involved in a number of enriching activities, such as practicums and internships, work experience, volunteering, involvement in study groups, studying foreign languages and study exchange schemes (see graph below).

In 2012, most students surveyed planned to either continue their current studies or leave their institution having completed their qualification (78%). 6% of students planned to change to a different qualification and 6% planned to shift to a different institution. Only 3% of students indicated that they planned to leave before finishing their qualification.

Overall, most students (81%) rated their entire educational experience as 'good' or 'excellent' and 84% of students would 'probably' or 'defintely' attend the same institution if they were given the chance to start over.