Investigating the Relation between Student Engagement and Attainment in a Flexible Learning Environment

The use of technology is increasingly adopted to support flexible learning in Higher Education institutions. The adoption of more sophisticated technologies offers a broad range of facilities for communication and resource sharing, thereby creating a flexible learning environment that facilitates and even encourages students not to physically attend classes. However this emerging trend seems to contradict class attendance requirements within universities, inevitably leading to a dilemma between amending traditional regulations and creating new policies for the higher education institutions. This study presents an investigation into student engagement in a technology enhanced/driven flexible environment along with its relationship to attainment. We propose an approach to modelling engagement from different perspectives in terms of indicators and then consider what impact these indicators have on student academic performance. We have carried out a case study on the relation between attendance and attainment in a flexible environment. Although our preliminary results show attendance is quantitatively correlated with successful student development and learning outcomes, our results also indicate there is a cohort that did not follow such a pattern. Nevertheless the preliminary results could provide an insight into pilot studies in the wider deployment of new technology to support flexible learning.

Authors:

• Y. Bi
• T. Anderson
• M. Huang

Keywords:

• Engagement
• flexible leaning
• attendance and attainment.

References:

[1] Vicki Trowler and Paul Trowler (2010). Student engagement evidence
summary,
[2] http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/studentengagement/Stud
entEngagementEvidenceSummary.pdf. 2010
[3] Hu, S. and Kuh, G.D. (2001) Being (Dis)Engaged in Educationally
Purposeful Activities:
[4] The Influences of Student and Institutional Characteristics. Paper
presented at the
[5] American Educational Research Association Annual Conference.
Seattle, WA, 10-14 April.
[6] Kuh, G.D. (2007) How to Help Students Achieve. Chronicle of Higher
Education. 53 (41), pp. B12-13.
[7] Krause, K. and Coates, H. (2008) Students- Engagement in First-Year
University. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 33 (5), pp.
493-505.
[8] Harper, S.R. and Quaye, S.J. (2009) Beyond Sameness, with
Engagement and Outcomes for All. In: Student Engagement in Higher
Education. New York and London Routledge, pp. 1-15.