Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal

A mixed methods study to explore the lived experiences of support offered to LGBTQ+ students in higher education.

Gemma Spencer — 2025-04-03

Since 2016, United Kingdom Higher Education Institutions (UKHEI’s) have seen an increase of 40% of applications from individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or other (LGBTQ+) and an 85% increase of transgender declarations. Despite recent positive reports around LGBTQ+ students in Higher Education, the academic literature paints a more negative picture. Much of the existing literature comes from interviews with staff and therefore this study, as part of a staff research internship, aimed to explore the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ students. Following co-production and design with LGBTQ+ students an online survey with 26 respondents was conducted with 6 semi-structured interviews analysed using thematic analysis. Three themes exploring the lived experiences were constructed: educational impact, belonging and institutional trust. Sub themes within highlighted that campaigns designed to demonstrate support for LGBTQ+ students did not go far enough in terms of educating people about contemporary issues and were often seen as tokenistic. Support services were not specific enough for this population of the student body. Alongside this, the discourse between the individual facets of the LGBTQ+ community highlighted a lack of belonging leading to self-isolation. Overall, this displayed a lack of trust and representation from the institution, leading to disengagement from academic studies. Recommendations include increased education around LGBTQ+ issues from management, support services and teaching staff alike with meaningful co-production with LGBTQ+ students to facilitate academic success and personal growth.

Promoting Student Engagement, Wellbeing, and Transfer of Learning through Weekly Check-in Surveys

Ruth Benander — 2025-04-03

This multidisciplinary study explores using an intentionally-designed teaching innovation to help students feel more connected and motivated in their classes – both online and in-person. The authors propose these weekly check-in surveys as a low-stakes strategy to improve classroom atmosphere. The anonymous, online check-ins focus on emotional states, with a quick debriefing of the aggregate responses, and address the major concerns documented in the literature on student mental health and achievement. In a two-year study of English and math classes (N=2271), students completed weekly check-ins concerning mental wellness and course concerns through Likert-like scales and open-ended questions. In the qualitative and quantitative data, students reported that they felt less alone, more connected, and more metacognitively aware of their emotional states. In addition, they reported they could transfer specific skills to future courses. No connection was found with retention or persistence, which seemed to be more influenced by life events rather than classroom experiences. The authors recommend a specific structure for these short surveys and ways to debrief the results with students.

The Student Engagement Enigma – The Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation Theory: A new theoretical lens to investigate Higher Education student phenomena

Caroline Sarah Jones — 2025-04-03

Currently, Higher Education (HE) is experiencing post-pandemic challenges which have increased pressure on HE students in multifaceted and interconnecting ways. Existing HE research suggests that post-pandemic, students’ mental health and wellbeing has been significantly impacted, thus indicating that proactive research into the field of HE students is needed now more than ever before. This article presents the new concept of the Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) theory as a lens through which HE student behaviours, characteristics, and demographics can be researched. It begins with an explanation of the PATA theory with links to student engagement enigmas, and then explores how this theory can be applied to researching the complexities of student demographics, with the aim being to develop knowledge and understanding of issues affecting students such as post-pandemic engagement. Furthermore, an analysis into the potential range of research methods that can be employed and utilised in HE practice is also presented, supported by three case vignette examples with key reflection points. A critical analysis and debate of this emerging educational theoretical perspective is presented with a concluding statement on the impact of how this theory can support researchers examining the complexities of the HE student community, the HE Institutional and HE political landscapes, on a national and international level.

The Intricacies of Student Engagement in Higher Education after the pandemic: Academic and Central Services staff views and experiences

Caroline Sarah Jones — 2025-04-03

This article reports on research which aimed to capture the voices of central services and academic staff at a UK Higher Education institution on the intricacies of student engagement in the post-pandemic era. Participants (n=23) took part in semi-structured interviews across the academic year 2023-24. This research contributes to the field of Higher Education by bringing additional insights to the ongoing debate of student engagement, including the tangible and non-tangible aspects. It identifies that students are tactically engaging as they cope with economic, political, and social challenges post pandemic. It found that students can be in attendance but disengaged or not in attendance but engaging online, which directly challenges student engagement monitoring methods. Recommendations are that social and relational teaching practice is embedded into the heart of HE delivery, with academics given time and space to deliver these practices, particularly for those HEIs with students from widening participation, commuter, or first-generation student demographics. Further research is needed to review barriers to student engagement post-pandemic to capture student voice and to examine the conflicts of students not being able to attend despite being committed, and those who do attend and appear to be less committed.

Orientation Towards a Master’s Degree: International Students’ Perceptions of Successful Engagement in Higher Education

Signe Siklander — 2025-04-03

Engagement is an important piece of effective strategies in both education and employment. Engagement is linked to well-being, persistence, and goal orientation. To raise and maintain interest, motivation and engagement during studies is crucial. This study explores international university students’ (n=25) experiences and perceptions related to the concept of engagement at the moment they entered a two-year master’s programme in Finland. Phenomenography was used as an analysis approach to build knowledge describing participants’ different experiences. The results suggest practical implications to support students’ cognitive and collaborative engagement in international study programmes, guiding educators to design more supportive materials, curricula, interactions and practices from the beginning of the education.

A Qualitative Study to Develop a Framework for Embedding EI in the Health & Social Care Curriculum: Students as Co-creators of Curriculum - An Inclusive Approach

Uzma Abid Siddiqui — 2025-04-03

Highly motivated and emotionally perceptive individuals are needed in every aspect of care (Man et al, 2020). Emotional Intelligence (EI) promotes coping strategies essential in managing stressful events and reduces negative emotions (Petzold, Plag & Strohle; 2020). There’s increasing need for healthcare students to be well-equipped in dealing with their own and service user’s emotional needs. This can be resolved through having a level of EI competency mandated for student development as future health care professionals (Quinlan; 2016). Considering the need for an inclusive learning and teaching approach in Higher Education (HE); This project aimed to develop a framework for embedding EI into an undergraduate Health & Social Care course curriculum. An inclusive approach was adopted through semi-structured interviews/questionnaires with students and fellow lecturers. Both respondents agreed that the curriculum learning outcomes should include EI with coherency and continuity throughout the course in a progressively developmental way. A theoretical framework was developed grounded in Toohey’s (1999) instructional design and Ouija board models for embedding EI strands. Subsequently, proposals of a framework for a curriculum programme were presented based on the results/findings of the study. Engaging students in co-creating curricula, applying, and utilising teaching methods around the topic of EI can help them build relationships with the discipline and link to real-world issues. The proposed framework is expected to enhance the quality of graduate’s EI on commencement of roles within healthcare settings.

Where place, lived experience and disciplinary knowledge converge

David Forrest — 2025-04-03

Transforming and Activating Places (TAP) was a knowledge exchange (KE) programme at the University of Sheffield that was run exclusively for widening participation students in the fields of the arts and humanities and social sciences. Between 2020 and 2023, the programme facilitated 200 short-term paid internships in which students completed intensive preparatory activities and then partnered with nearly 80 external partners for projects and activities related to place and placemaking. After situating the research within the current literature on experiential learning, student KE and KE more broadly, we present and analyse in this article the data collected from a series of student surveys completed in the programme’s first and second year. With a particular emphasis on the voices, experiences and reported benefits for TAP student participants, we identify three interconnected domains of student KE that have evolved through the project: 1) applying disciplinary knowledge, 2) identifying lived experience, 3) realising expertise. We conclude that, where all three domains are activated within student KE - that is, where it involves students' identification and application of disciplinary knowledge and lived experience, as well as a conscious synthesising and framing of that knowledge as valuable expertise - then it is at its most transformative and productive.

Fostering student engagement, learning communities and student performance through game-based learning

Amanda Shaker — 2025-04-03

One way to encourage student engagement is through incentivisation. Rewarding students with marks, even for relatively low-tariff assessments, can encourage good study habits in students who were previously disengaged with learning materials. However, assessment-based incentivisation has inconclusive results on student learning. Therefore, this raises the question of whether alternative forms of incentivisation lead to better engagement and student learning. A more subtle form of incentivised engagement are active learning pedagogies such as game-based learning. The idea is that through fun and appealing learning activities, students are more likely to be actively engaged, and assimilate knowledge faster because there is an element of friendly competition with peers. In theory, gamification works by drawing student’s attention to goals, nudging students in the right direction, giving students immediate feedback, rewarding good performance and breaking down learning into manageable tasks.

In this study, students on statistics modules at an Australian and a UK university are incentivised through participation in games, and the effect is considered in terms of student performance, engagement, and the student experience. At the Australian university, incentivisation seemed to help academically weaker students to achieve higher marks, but no effect was observed for academically stronger students. At the UK university, incentivisation seemed to increase good student behaviour (attendance and homework completion) for around a third of students but this did not lead to better exam performance. At both universities, qualitative feedback from students was positive in terms of their enjoyment, providing extra motivation and assisting their learning.

‘What do you meme?’: Exploring students’ engagement with the use of emojis, memes and GIFs in higher education teaching

Beatrice Hayes — 2025-04-03

Emojis, memes and gifs are digital tools that are becoming increasingly incorporated within higher education (HE) learning. Whether it be through online communication (e.g, emails) or via learning resources (e.g., PowerPoint slides), emojis, memes and GIFs are used by HE teaching staff to convey meaning. Our understanding of how effective emojis, memes and gifs are in engaging students remains limited. To explore this, we conducted an online survey with undergraduate students (N= 115, M_age= 19.10 years) exploring student engagement scores when presented with emojis, memes and gifs via either private online communication environments (e.g., emails) or public online learning content (e.g., PowerPoint slides). Following a two-way repeated measures ANOVA , our findings highlight that, combined, emojis and memes are perceived as the most engaging digital tool overall. Our findings also highlight that these digital tools are viewed as more engaging when presented within private online communication environments. Our study presents important pedagogic findings that will benefit HE teaching staff in utilising digital tools appropriately within their communication with students and learning resources.

Building and valuing relationships

Rachel Forsyth — 2025-04-03

Student-led Community Engagement Projects as an Alternative to Traditional Field Placements

Nicole Patrie — 2025-04-03

This paper presents an experiential learning project designed to replace a traditional field placement experience for students in the Correctional Services program at MacEwan University. Community Engagement Projects (CEP) were self-directed initiatives developed and implemented by students, undertaken in partnership with community organizations. Faculty members supported the projects through scaffolded assessments and weekly discussion seminars. Details of the CEP will be presented along with student and faculty reflections on the experience. Finally, we will explore options for future iterations of the project.

Understanding perceptions of the student experience: Dot voting to identify perceived risks to equality of opportunity, a practice-based case study

Zoe Allman — 2025-04-03

“Don’t use focus groups”, advice received from students’ union leaders at an east-Midlands university when considering how best to engage students in the development of the university’s Access and Participation Plan (APP). The challenge was set, avoid using the same tried and tested method, try something different, be innovative (Galbraith, 2021), if you really want to hear the student voice in an impactful way.

Book Review: ‘University and You: Strengthen your skills and develop your potential’

Xiuxiu Bao — 2025-04-03