According to the definitions used in NSOPF, teaching is at least five separate and distinct activities: preparing for class, performing in the classroom, developing new courses, advising students, and grading or evaluating their work. Although NSOPF identified these activities as comprising teaching, it didn't collect data about them individually.

Interestingly, however, a 1994 survey of Cal State faculty did collect data to show what percentage of time was devoted to each of these activities, and they are shown in Table 3. Like most faculty at comprehensive universities, professors at CSU campuses devote almost 60 percent of their work time to teaching—59.43 percent, to be exact.

As these percentages show, we spend as much time preparing for class, as we do actually performing in a classroom, and we spend even more time—almost 21 percent—interacting with students outside the classroom, either by evaluating their tests and papers or through conversations during office hours and in the hallways.