Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal

RAISE Buddy Scheme: A Group Reflection

Kiu Sum — 2026-04-24

This collaborative autoethnography explores the experiences of three Higher Education practitioners participating in the RAISE Buddy Scheme. Initially joining for professional development and potential collaboration, we found that the scheme evolved into a reflective, supportive, and human‑centred counter-space within an increasingly metric‑driven sector. Through shared dialogue across difference, we cultivated a space of trust, solidarity, and critical friendship that enabled open exploration of identity, belonging, and purpose in academia. Our reflections reveal that the Buddy Scheme offered more than peer support. As a result, this provided a vital site of connection that challenged hierarchical and isolating norms, demonstrating that taking time to “be with others” is both necessary and transformative in contemporary HE.

From Coping to Confidence: Linking Wellbeing and Flexibility in Assessment

Kelly-Marie Winfield — 2026-04-24

This case study explores the role of flexible assessment in enhancing student voice, wellbeing, and confidence in higher education. Building on doctoral research that identified coping as a central theme in student wellbeing, it considers how curriculum design can act as a structural intervention to support confidence. A flexible assessment approach was introduced in the opening module of a Level 6 top-up degree, enabling students to choose their own learning outcomes and assessment methods.

Student reflections highlighted three key outcomes: increased confidence, stronger motivation and engagement, and improved preparedness for subsequent prescribed assessments. While flexible assessment did not significantly alter grades, students consistently described feeling “trusted” and more capable, emphasising that early autonomy reduced anxiety and helped them approach later challenges with resilience.

This case study suggests that flexible assessment should not be viewed as a universal replacement for traditional tasks but as a strategic tool to support transition points where confidence is most at risk. For institutions, this reflection highlights how embedding student voice into assessment can align with priorities around inclusion, engagement, and wellbeing, as articulated in sector frameworks such as the Teaching Excellence Framework. Ultimately, flexible assessment illustrates how moving from coping to confidence can create the conditions for learners to thrive in higher education.

Revitalising student voice through a trilateral partnership approach: How a university and students’ union sought to refresh practice and re-boot student engagement and representation

Sarah-Louise Harder-Collins — 2026-04-24

This case study explores the trilateral (three-way) partnership approach undertaken at an English university and students’ union to revitalise student voice and ‘re-boot’ student engagement against the backdrop of the existential challenges facing UK higher education providers. The approach included the reworking of the ‘Student Voice & Representation Policy’ to formalise student voice and representation mechanisms; the creation of a new trilateral ‘Student Charter’, to clarify expectations and commitments of each party for successful student engagement; and, the pilot of the innovative ‘Student Experience Collaborators Scheme’ that empowered students to work in partnership with senior staff and students’ union elected officers to shape the student experience, as an alternative approach to the traditional Student Advisory Council. Further considerations and reflections have been contextualised against key debates concerning inclusive representation within staff–student partnerships.

Enhancing student professional and personal development: Best practices for student engagement from over a decade of hosting Global Health Case Competitions

Krish Shah — 2026-04-24

An interdisciplinary and innovative Global Health Case Competition (GHCC) has been hosted since 2011 by the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. The GHCC invites undergraduate, graduate, and professional students across Vanderbilt University to tackle global health challenges as a way to build skills in global health project development and professional competencies. Since its launch, the GHCC has prioritized student leadership by engaging over 120 student leaders and 200 student volunteers who design and manage every facet of the competition. From conceptualization to presentation, students, along with university mentors, play a vital role in crafting an intentional GHCC that provides participants with a global health experience that enhances professional skills in critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. Case competitions have been growing in popularity, particularly in consulting and finance, but an evidence-based framework for planning and evaluating these competitions, especially in global health, has not been established. Through surveying student participants, volunteers, and leaders, we have identified five best practices: student ownership, partnership with an external global health organization, interdisciplinary and interprofessional approach, institutional support, and mentorship. Analyses of these principles on student impact have suggested a direct association with students’ overall experience as well as positive growth in their personal and professional development. These principles can inform similar competitions at other universities and could catalyze experiential learning opportunities on real-life global health issues.

Re‑centring Student Partnership in Contemporary Higher Education

Stuart Sims — 2026-04-24

This edition of Student Engagement in Higher Education brings together scholarship that approaches student engagement not as a fixed or easily measurable outcome, but as a contested, relational, and deeply political practice. Collectively, these papers invite readers to reconsider how engagement is conceptualised, who defines it, and whose knowledge is legitimised within higher education.

Collectively, the contributions in this issue reaffirm the importance of relational, wellbeing-informed, and partnership-based approaches in creating conditions where student engagement can be sustained, meaningful, and transformative.

“There are limits to being helpful”: student engagement from the perspectives of Social Scientists at a post-92 university in the UK

Sunny Dhillon — 2026-04-24

This primary research paper synthesises responses from lecturers at a post-92 university in the Midlands, UK, with existing literature on the contested concept of ‘student engagement’. Through thematic analysis, key themes include conceptualising student engagement, perceived barriers to such readings of student engagement, and potential strategies to improve it. Key findings are that the dialectical relationship between academics (providers) and student (receivers) under neoliberal conditions of Higher Education (HE) provision in the United Kingdom (UK) highly compromises enacting progressive readings of student engagement. Strategies to address this range from pedagogies of care to punitive measures, with the impact of dwindling student participation upon academics’ self-concept made apparent. This paper will be of interest to academic staff working within the Social Sciences (and wider disciplines) in the marketised context of UK HE. The paper concludes by calling for further research into academics’ self-concept and self-efficacy.

Empowering students as partners in enhancing assessment practice, using the research-informed EAT framework

Sheila Amici-Dargan — 2026-04-24

Developing self-regulatory skills is fundamental to effective learning in higher education, and assessment has a key role to play in this process. Assessment designed to support self-regulation drives student agency, independence, and criticality, provided students are engaged with the assessment activity. Student partnership is valuable in evaluating the benefits and limitations of assessments, and in enhancing their impact. Student engagement can be achieved either through actively understanding the core elements of the assessment, co-designing assessment tasks, or, active involvement in post hoc revision of assessments. A powerful conceptual approach for engaging students in assessment is the ‘Equity, Agency, and Transparency’ (EAT) framework established in 2016 to support an integrated approach to assessment and feedback. EAT has three interrelated dimensions: assessment literacy, feedback and design. EAT resources (including tools for ranking assessments and an engagement scale) can be used for free by students and staff to view assessments objectively. This case study focuses on a series of activities which involve students using EAT to review a series of assessments and co-design interventions to enhance student assessment literacy and feedback. We describe how EAT can be used to initiate conversations about enhancement needs and to scaffold the development of a peer-led intervention. We found EAT effective in providing opportunities for students to participate in discourse around assessment and empowering them to support their own and each other’s learning. The outcomes of our assessment interventions highlight the benefits of involving students as active partners in developing and enhancing assessment and feedback practices.

The Inverted Classroom in ESP: Engaging Students in Active Learning

Gerlinde Koppitsch — 2026-04-24

The Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) was introduced in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses at an Austrian university to enhance student engagement. This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of ICM in fostering engagement among part-time and full-time undergraduate Engineering students, who often face anxiety in language learning due to their focus on technology. Using a design-based research approach across three iterative cycles over four years, the study employed mixed methods—focus group interviews and questionnaires—to assess behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement. Findings revealed consistently high engagement, particularly in the social and emotional dimensions, with part-time students showing stronger peer collaboration and reflective learning. Pre-class assignments were found to substantially enhance in-class participation but posed challenges in home study phases, especially for part-time learners. Furthermore, the educator’s engagement seemed to significantly influence student engagement and performance. The study concludes that ICM is a viable method for ESP instruction, though course design should be tailored to diverse student needs and promote self-regulated learning.

Students as Partners in Peer Review of Teaching: A Collaborative Model Involving the Students’ Union

Emma Hollenberg — 2026-04-24

In this paper we highlight the benefits of engaging with internal (academic reviewers and student reviewers) and external (Students’ Union) stakeholders in the implementation of a voluntary system of reviews of teaching in Higher Education. In particular, we describe our experience in introducing such a model in a research-intensive institution in the UK and reflect on the conditions and challenges for such a scheme to bring positive change in terms of teaching practices, academic culture and student experience.

What drives Student Engagement in higher education? Exploring key demographic, institutional and personal variables

Swarnima Sharma — 2026-04-24

Student engagement is widely recognized as a significant factor influencing academic and developmental outcomes in higher education. Student engagement has thus become a significant consideration for educators both as a means of understanding student behavior and performance and for addressing student needs – individually and through system-wide efforts. Against the backdrop of the massification and diversification of Indian higher education, coupled with persistent concerns regarding learning outcomes and employability, the present study has been designed to examine the factors shaping student engagement and to inform contextually relevant interventional measures. The study investigates demographic, institutional and personal variables that may predict student engagement in higher education by using differential analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis on data collected from 553 students. The key predictors included demographic variables such as gender, socioeconomic status, locale, institutional variables, namely, Modes of Curriculum Transaction and Organizational Culture and Ambience, and personal variables such as Lifestyle, Achievement Motivation, and Perceived Relevance of Curriculum. Findings revealed a non-significant influence of demographic variables (except for gender) on student engagement. The regression model explained 30.5% of the variance in student engagement by institutional and personal variables. Institutional variables demonstrated greater predictive strength, jointly accounting for 21% of the variance, while personal variables explained an additional 10%. The findings accentuate the pivotal role of institutional practices in shaping student engagement and offer a pathway for educational stakeholders to design interventions to engagement of students in higher education.

Post-pandemic student engagement: Towards techno-humanistic reflexivity

Ghsoon Reda — 2026-04-24

This opinion piece examines how student engagement is understood and practised in contemporary higher education, where technological innovation and humanistic values increasingly intersect (see Bond et al., 2020). It approaches the concept through a techno-humanistic lens, arguing that recent conceptualisations of engagement, grounded in socio-cultural perspectives, draw on humanistic principles, such as self-actualisation, creativity, and personal growth, realised through relational interactions and collaborative learning. In contemporary educational environments, these principles are enacted and mediated through digital technologies, enabling students to engage both collaboratively and independently. Noddings (2013) illustrates how human-centred principles of care and responsibility can guide educational relationships, providing an ethical framework that can be extended to digitally mediated learning. This framework resonates with UNESCO’s (2021, 2022) framing of education as a public good, linking individual development to broader social responsibility. Viewed through this techno-humanistic lens, engagement can be understood as a reflexive, contextually mediated practice in which human agency and technological mediation interact to shape meaningful learning that supports individual development while fostering broader social responsibility. This perspective highlights that prevailing understandings remain incomplete without recognising the intertwined humanistic, technological, and ethical conditions shaping post-pandemic student engagement.