What is Student Engagement

Dimensions of Student Engagement

Student engagement can be demonstrated in three different ways. To achieve optimal results, universities are well-advised to aim for a positive balance of these three engagement types:

Behavioral Engagement: Students who are highly involved in all aspects of campus life demonstrate this type of engagement. They turn in assignments on time, participate actively in class, and participate in various extracurricular activities offered by the school.
Emotional Engagement: These students will have deep personal ties with their alma mater and proudly display their affiliations. This engagement is materialized through proactive relations with their teachers and a heightened interest in their classes.
Cognitive Engagement: Students with cognitive engagement will research new methods and techniques to improve their learning capacity while setting academic goals for themselves without being prompted to do so.

Fostering a balance between behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement is essential for universities seeking to create a dynamic and thriving academic environment. Cultivating each type of engagement creates a layered student connection less easily affected by outside factors and economical contexts.

Why is Student Engagement Important?

High student engagement is important for universities, regardless of their region or specialty, because it’s an x-factor for positive impact across multiple metrics. From improving test results to building a positive campus life, engaged students lead to better student recruitment and improved relations with their alma mater once they graduate.

Here are just a few examples of how student engagement impacts a university’s overall profile to current and prospective students:

Higher academic achievement

Engaged students view their academic path as a positive and constructive endeavor that will better their lives overall. This feeling leads them to go above and beyond in their studies and seek ways to get extra credit through research or internships.

Academic achievement is often one of the main ways potential students evaluate higher education institutions, and you must be able to prove its significance to convince them to attend.

Influence on student motivation and attitudes

If students feel disconnected from the way knowledge is transferred or campus life overall, their attitude will sour. Ultimately, students in this negative situation will lack the drive and determination needed to power through a degree.

Role in reducing dropout rates

Creating a positive and supportive environment for students can go a long way to keep them motivated about their studies. When students feel their institution values their voice, they gain a sense of commitment to their academic journey.

One of the main reasons students drop out is that they feel at odds with the institution’s environment. If students feel strongly connected to their peers, their alma mater, and their teachers, they are more likely to try harder to finish their education.

Contribution to overall student well-being

Almost every prospective student expects that attending a higher education institution will be an enjoyable and formative experience. To achieve this goal, students must feel a strong connection to their alma mater but also to their peers and the subject matter in their classes.

Students who had a positive experience at their alma mater are not only more likely to donate to their former institution, but they will also become active champions of your school, recommending that their friends and family also attend.

How to Measure Student Engagement

Most university administrators can tell whether their students are engaged or not. Student engagement is easy to feel and witness, but it’s also easy to wrongly assume things are going well if you don’t measure it with a set of robust metrics.

Uncovering the problems that may be causing disengaged students can only be done through a student feedback and course evaluation campaign.

A bonus to student feedback-gathering efforts is that it increases student engagement before the process is even over. When students witness their university’s administration proactively asking them how to improve their campus environment, they are more likely to feel a stronger connection to the institution.

Here are some methods your institution can deploy to generate the most accurate, usable data-driven insights:

Quantitative Methods

Quantitative data is essential for providing easily comparable measurable observations. This kind of data is also best for reporting visualizations, which help decision-making stakeholders evaluate engagement issues.

The most common quantitative statistics used to assess student engagement are:

Test scores
Attendance records
Participation rates

Any of these statistics in a vacuum may not be a good representation of student engagement. But, when studied in tandem and cross-referenced, they provide a detailed outlook on the matter.

Qualitative Methods

Qualitative data is necessary to obtain a nuanced overview of student engagement while uncovering trends that numbers wouldn’t reflect accurately. Gathering this data also shows how much you care about student voice.

Common qualitative data vectors include:

Observations
Student interviews
Focus groups

This type of data can be harder to analyze than quantitative insights. Since students typically share these findings as personalized written answers, a machine learning tool like Explorance MLY can significantly help analyze sentences and reflect the sentiments expressed in the content.

Technological tools

Student engagement campaigns tend to generate a large amount of data from various sources, which can be complicated to analyze by hand. Here are just a few examples of data sources that can be employed during a student feedback campaign:

Feedback platform
Seating maps
Learning Management System(LMS)

These tech tools allow higher education institutions to monitor student behaviors and opinions that negatively and positively impact student engagement. Using them in concert provides a transparent, holistic view of student engagement.

Strategies for Enhancing Student Engagement

Student engagement isn’t something you can improve and move on from - it should be a constant priority and the main driver behind executive decisions made by the leadership team at a higher education institution.

Every new initiative should be introduced through the lens of improving the student engagement level. Here are the most important categories and ideas to improve them:

Active Learning

The course load taught in higher education institutions can be overwhelming if students are forced to learn in uncomfortable settings. Universities must also juggle different generations in classes and adapt to the learning styles of each age group.

While the well-known setup of a professor giving a presentation in front of a class isn’t going anywhere, it’s important to keep students engaged with detail-oriented tweaks like:

Interactive activities like field trips and internships
Group work to promote collaboration and workforce readiness
Discussions to encourage healthy opinion-sharing on complex subjects

Technology Integration

Millennials and younger generations have likely done most of their learning online or through other digital means, and teaching styles must be adapted to reflect this new reality.

Whether it’s remote learning or other new trends, universities can increase engagement through methods like:

Learning management systems (LMS) provide flexibility by letting students complete assignments and projects remotely while also offering the institution more accurate data.
Online resources that allow students to research at their own pace in an environment they are familiar with.
Gamification techniques can help keep students interested and encourage friendly competition around certain subjects. For example, incorporating interactive simulations to the classroom or public leaderboards to foster friendly competition between students.

Student-Centered Approaches

As higher education institutions evolve and grow in the digital age, the focus can sometimes drift away from the student perspective. If cohorts start to feel like their institution is treating them passively or impersonally, they are more likely to feel disconnected.

Here are some tenets of a student-centered approach you can consider for your classrooms:

Personalized learning caters to different learning styles and promotes emotional connections by giving students opportunities for success despite challenges.
Student choice and voice must be accommodated through course evaluations, feedback campaigns, and the involvement of student representatives in major decisions. Students inevitably feel more connected if they have agency over their campus.
Welcoming classrooms is an often overlooked factor of student engagement. Comfortable seating, plentiful outlets to plug laptops, and ample table space all contribute to the level of attention in class.

Building Relationships

Student engagement is often defined by the relationships built during students' time at a higher education institution. These interactions dictate the level of connection students feel to their environment during their studies.

Three types of relationships should be actively fostered: between peers, students, and the university. Here are the most impactful practices to consider for each of them:

Academic advising through regular office hours and specialized tutoring is essential to make students feel like their teachers have their best interests at heart.
Regular, varied student activities like sports teams, concerts, and clubs are great for promoting peer interactions.
Feedback campaigns that build ties with their students and show how much administrators care about the voices and opinions of the people attending their institution.

Benefits of High Student Engagement Rates

When student engagement is elevated, a university's entire ecosystem benefits tremendously. When universities and colleges focus on this metric, they improve the student experience and build a stronger, more visible brand, boosting future student applications and alumni donations.

With higher student engagement rates, universities typically enjoy:

Improved academic outcomes and grades

When students feel comfortable asking their teachers and peers for help, their grades inevitably improve. This improvement creates a self-fulfilling cycle where students are happier because of their success and potential future students notice and apply at a higher rate when the overall median grades increase.

Enhanced critical thinking and problem-solving skills

Engaged students learn that their actions can impact their surroundings and situations, which helps them develop important skills they can use in their professional and personal lives. Initiatives like student feedback also teach your cohorts how to give input constructively.

Greater student satisfaction and enjoyment of learning

If students feel connected to their university and teachers, they are bound to be more fulfilled and hopeful for their future after their education. These students will then create new bonds with their peers and teachers that can lead to job opportunities, starting businesses, and other career-furthering opportunities. Additionally, providing students with control over their education through course evaluations makes their learning more fun and dynamic.

Increased likelihood of continuing education

When a university feels like home, students develop bonds with their teachers and peers and will feel encouraged to not only continue their studies but seek even higher levels of knowledge at your institution. For this reason, student engagement is far more than an enjoyment measure, it can be directly tracked to higher revenue for universities.

Challenges in Achieving Student Engagement

Student engagement is a complex metric, and some of the barriers to promoting it can be either societal and structural. While these issues can be challenging to fix, they must be considered when implementing alleviating measures and policies.

Common examples of such barriers include:

Socioeconomic factors
Lack of resources or investments
Mental health issues
Institutional rigidity
Social media and technology distractions

Overcoming these and related obstacles requires a layered, multi-pronged approach to cover all the bases and identify measures that could serve more than one purpose.

It is also important to recognize that certain measures can introduce challenges and still deliver net positive impact. For example, remote learning allows students to study no matter where they are and follow course material at their own pace, but it also introduces the issue of frequent distractions from social media or other factors.

Student Engagement Case Studies and Real-World Examples

Student engagement campaigns are transforming the way higher education institutions are operating worldwide. Here are a few examples of Explorance clients who successfully switched to a data-based decision making system using course evaluation data:

Learn how Universidad Internacional de Valencia devised a comprehensive yearly 12-survey schedule to improve the student experience.
The American University in Cairo’s course evaluations have dramatically improved student-teacher relations and gave more flexibility to administrators
Since Reykjavík University started using Explorance Blue, course evaluations have become an essential tool for stimulating student engagement.
The University of Mary Washington gains powerful data through student feedback to improve classroom settings.

The Secret to Successful Student Engagement Campaigns

Student engagement is essential in providing a multifaceted education that shares the proper knowledge while preparing cohorts for the workforce. The secret lies in involving students in their learning process but also in the future of the institution they are attending.

Gathering feedback from sources like general surveys and course evaluations is an important process that will guide you through the required steps to make your students feel more connected and heard on campus.

Student feedback also has the added benefit of being a great way to increase engagement in itself. As a result, administrations are much more likely to be engaged with their cohorts and want to act proactively to improve their education.

Higher education institutions must reprioritize initiatives to emphasize and encourage student engagement. Whether through innovative teaching methods, different learning arrangements, or improving the learning environment, universities must evolve to cater to the needs of the new generations attending their classrooms.

What is Student Engagement?