Understanding the factors that impact student engagement

In this episode, Dr Kerr Castle (Quality Enhancement and Standards Specialist at QAA) sits down with Dr George Hulene, Associate Dean of Faculty of Business and Law at Coventry University; Professor Eleanor Davies, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Huddersfield Business School; and Dr Peter Wolstencroft, Liverpool John Moores University. The discussion focuses on the outcomes of a QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project led by Coventry University that explored how patterns of student attendance and student engagement are changing across post-pandemic UK higher education.

The project involved working with ten business schools to explore students’ priorities and produced a Student Engagement Framework following their exploration of how students have responded to the changes in delivery and assessment, Their findings identified key themes, including: 

• Timetabling and commuting students 
• The need for virtual and physical communities 
• The importance of recordings to support flexible learning 
• Digital literacy and inequalities 
• Mobilising student voice 

These themes are picked up through the discussion in the podcast. As mentioned in the episode, you might also like to explore our work around supporting successful student transitions, which offers positive approaches and practical solutions to help support transitions to and through higher education.