Faculty Time Allocation Workload Knowledge Study (TAWKs) 2026

This study was aimed at getting an updated snapshot of how faculty members spend their time at work. In 2013, we conducted our first round of data collection with 30 Boise State faculty. Results were published in The Blue Review (now archived, preprint here) and a presentation was given at the Boise State University's Undergraduate Research Symposium (poster here). As in the previous work, undergraduate student research assistants, trained in human subjects research and implementation of the modified 24-hour recall diary method, conducted interviews with 8 volunteering faculty on alternating days over two-week periods. The analysis of these data show a somewhat similar distributions of faculty activities and work functions, but the total average time these faculty spent at work in 2026 was significantly less than the average in 2013. Possible explanations include the small sample size biased to full professors and a greater concern and awareness of work-life balance concerns among these faculty. This round aimed to support open science, and we developed a workflow that streamlined data collection and analysis. The data collection form is included in this data submission alongside the analytical code and anonymized data.