Encouraging Student Engagement

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Encouraging Student Engagement
AttainmentQueens University of Belfast17/18th
September
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A Southern Hemisphere Perspective on Student
Engagement

• Lorraine Stefani
• Director, Centre for Academic Development,
  University of Auckland, New Zealand

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Student Engagement An Overview

• The concept of engagement what does it mean?
• Why has the term engagement entered into the
  lexicon of learning and teaching?
• How is engagement being measured?
• The scholarship of student engagement
• The strategic approach to enhancing student
  engagement.

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Define Student Engagement
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Student Engagement What does it mean?

• Engagement refers to the time energy and
  resources students devote to activities designed
  to enhance their learning at University

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Student Engagement further defined

• The well adjusted and engaged student is one who
  assesses and re-assesses their thinking as
  transitions and opportunities to engage in
  different ways continue through and beyond the
  first year of university (Krause, 2006)

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A Curriculum for Engagement

• A curriculum for engagement calls for a
  teaching that is likely to engage, to connect, to
  lift, to enthuse, even to inspire. A Curriculum
  for engagement calls for a pedagogy for
  engagement
• (Barnett and Coates, 2005)

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• Why is the concept of student engagement a hot
  topic in Higher Education?

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Student Engagement as a Hot Topic

• Changing student demographics (Net Gen, Gen Y)
• Global marketing of education
• Government imperatives on retention and
  attainment
• Another push for radical curriculum change?

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What is being measured?

• Student views on
• Orientation and induction (institutional/faculty/d
  epartment)
• Paid work/relationship to (dis)engagement
• Motivation to study
• Engagement with academic staff/peers/learning
  environment
• Perceptions of/satisfaction with teaching
• Academic advice
• ICT/online resources
• Assessment

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Measuring Student Engagement

• How can we realistically measure whether or not
  our students are engaged?
• Do student surveys provide meaningful data?
• Who owns the survey questions?
• Are surveys the only approach to measurement?

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Dimensions of student engagement
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Connectedness and Student Engagement

• Connecting with peer groups
• Connecting with the research and the researchers
  of their discipline (a scholarly community)
• Connecting with the institution
• Understanding student support services
• Learning the language and conventions of the
  disciplinary field of study
• Learning how to do the learning in a particular
  subject area

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The Complexity of Student Engagement

• Contextual factors beyond the University
  (educational, linguistic, socio-cultural
  background and experience).
• Paid work and other life commitments
• A one-size fits all conception of engagement
• The nature and mission of the institution
• Students perceptions of the relevance of their
  studies re personal career aspirations and goals
  for the future.

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Academic Orientation (Induction)

• 2004 study 50 of respondents believed that
  orientation programmes provided a good
  introduction to the University.
• 40 of students felt that those programmes helped
  to develop a sense of belonging in the University
  community
• 25 of respondents did not think orientation
  programmes helped them to feel a sense of
  belonging.

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Adjusting to Study
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Are we keeping up to date with technology in
teaching?

• Most universities are unprepared for the changes
  society requires they are not versatile or very
  adaptable
• Most universities have still not perceived that
  the arrival of new information technologies
  totally changes the role of the institution and
  the educational process and those that cannot
  adapt to the changes due to institutional inertia
  will see their function turn obsolete, their
  financial bases destroyed, their technologies
  substituted and their role in scientific and
  intellectual research reduced.
• Guardian Weekly, July 27, 2007

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Strategic Approach

• A holistic approach within the institution.
• Institutional change from structure to culture,
  from top down decision making to the creation of
  faculty wide commitment from hierarchy to
  development of leadership, from delivering
  products to coaching for change processes.
• Development of a shared vision on curriculum
  standards, pedagogy and the skills necessary for
  change.

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The Strategic Approach ctd.

• Academic initiatives designed to integrate ICT
  into the undergraduate and postgraduate
  curriculum with the aim of providing new learning
  experiences.
• Development of a culture of collaboration using
  the full potential of technology.
• Better use of time in and out of the classroom,
  improved communication and enhanced interaction
  with course materials.

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Towards a scholarship of student engagement

• Discussion and explanation of the personal and
  institutional processes involved in study and
  assessment
• Greater acceptance of a wide range of different
  motives and types of engagement
• Much more explicit discussion of key assumptions
  and principles of the nature of university level
  study and the culture of the disciplines
• Reconsideration of how language can alienate
  learners, students have to be able to apprehend
  the implicit structure of the discourse
• Educating students about more complex aspects of
  process through which disciplinary aims may be
  realised. (learning how to do the learning in a
  disciplinary subject area

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A research Agenda on Student Engagement

• Enhancing our understanding of the relationship
  between levels of student engagement and
  outcomes.
• Identifying the characteristics of significant
  learning experiences.
• Examining the validity and reliability of survey
  questions relating to student engagement
• How might we transform the current academic
  culture to develop disciplinary based
  professional educators without compromising the
  level of importance of disciplinary based
  research?

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Radical Change

• The shift from a deficit model of the individual
  towards an attempt to understand social attitudes
  and practices as the cause of such perceived
  deficits.
• A shift from . . What is wrong with this student?
  To what are the features of the curriculum or the
  processes of interaction around the curriculum
  which are preventing some students from being
  able to access this subject?

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Practical Steps to Enhance Levels of Engagement

• Clear statements regarding staff and student
  responsibilities
• A first year student web-site
• Create a Student Experience Unit
• Celebrate teaching recognition, support,
  awards.
• Research and document teaching and learning
  practice from a first year experience
  perspective.
• Provide annual awards for quality first year
  teaching.
• Review the academic agenda and promote academic
  development

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Academic Development

• How easy is it to engage academic staff in
  real, meaningful, sustainable change (culture)?
• Change is a journey not a blueprint.
• Good practice is rarely simply transferable.
• Academic developers themselves need to reflect on
  current assumptions about appropriate pedagogies
  for 21st C students!

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In the Final Analysis

• The more students learn, the more value they find
  in their learning, the more likely they are to
  stay and graduate. This is particularly true for
  more able and motivated students who seek out
  learning and are in turn more likely to respond
  to perceived shortcomings in the quality of
  learning they experience on campus. Lest we
  forget, the purpose of higher education is not
  merely that students are retained but that they
  are educated. In the final analysis student
  learning drives student retention (Tinto, 2002).