Building bridges in higher education: Student-faculty relationship quality, student engagement, and student loyalty

Abstract

This study's aim was to investigate a hypothesized model examining the associations between students' perceptions of the quality of their relationship with their educational faculty and staff (i.e., relationship quality) and students' involvement. The relationship quality measurement included students' experiences with all educational faculty and staff, with the aim of predicting student engagement and student loyalty. Based on data from 454 higher education students, findings indicate that affective commitment and affective conflict are important relationship quality dimensions that influence the student engagement dimensions of absorption, dedication, and vigor. The main conclusion is that a relationship management approach in higher education is fruitful to achieve positive academic outcomes such as student engagement and student loyalty. 1. Introduction Research on relationships between students and their educational faculty and staff has become increasingly important due to recent developments in higher education. The use of degree completion rates to evaluate universities (Estermann & Claeys-Kulik, 2016; Jones, 2016) or other forms of performance-based funding (Hagedorn, 2015), as well as global competition among institutions and about their rankings (Chirikov, 2016; Elken, Hovdhaugen, & Stensaker, 2016), and increasingly customer-like behavior by students (Woodall, Hiller, & Resnick, 2012), all bring a focus on developing positive relationships with higher educational stakeholders to the fore. Positive student-faculty relationships in higher education can contribute to students' involvement and achievement (Umbach & Wawrzynski, 2005); they have been shown to be related to higher student retention rates (O'Keeffe, 2013), better academic performance (Klem & Connell, 2004), sense of school belonging (Wong, Parent, & Konishi, 2019), and decreased student drop-out rates (Klem & Connell, 2004). Because positive student-faculty relationships can lead to engaged students who enjoy studying and therefore might be connected to their educational faculty and staff during and after graduation, they deserve the attention of higher education institutions (HEIs; Atnip, 2015). Prior educational research on student-faculty or teacher-student relationships has demonstrated that these relationships, when perceived positively, can lead to positive outcomes (e.g.

Alumni loyalty drivers in higher education

“…In the hypothesized and tested model, trust in benevolence had a statistically significant association with absorption, dedication, and vigor. In previous research (Snijders et al 2018b), where the sample consisted of enrolled students, trust in benevolence did not have a statistically significant association with student engagement. Perhaps alumni's perception of their former trust in faculty and staff's helpfulness changes over time.…”

“…Qualitative research by Cotten and Wilson (2006) suggested that the frequency and quality of interactions between students and their faculty/staff could stimulate positive relationships between all parties. Recent research (e.g., Pianta et al 2012;Xerri et al 2018) has pointed out that students' perceptions of the relations between students and their faculty/staff can positively influence students' engagement, and in turn, students' current loyalty (Snijders et al 2018b;Sung and Yang 2009). For instance, in an earlier study (Snijders et al 2018b), findings indicated that affective commitment and affective conflict are important relationship quality dimensions that positively link with the student engagement of enrolled students.…”

“…Recent research (e.g., Pianta et al 2012;Xerri et al 2018) has pointed out that students' perceptions of the relations between students and their faculty/staff can positively influence students' engagement, and in turn, students' current loyalty (Snijders et al 2018b;Sung and Yang 2009). For instance, in an earlier study (Snijders et al 2018b), findings indicated that affective commitment and affective conflict are important relationship quality dimensions that positively link with the student engagement of enrolled students. Furthermore, Farrow and Yuan (2011) suggested that the strength of ties between faculty/staff and former students may positively relate to loyalty in terms of attitude and behavior.…”

“…As expected, a statistically significant positive association was found between student engagement dedication and alumni loyalty. Previous research (Snijders et al 2018b) explained this association by presuming that there might be a strong connection between students' commitment to their educational faculty/staff, and their dedication to their studies. Based on commitment-trust theory (Morgan and Hunt 1994), commitment acts through dedication as a precursor for loyalty.…”

Examining the impact of students’ attendance, sketching, visualization, and tutors experience on students’ performance: a case of building structures course in construction management

“…Alioon and Delialioğlu (2019) explored the implementation of m-learning and their comparison of the results from two semesters revealed that the improvements in the immersive content of the activities and instructional process increase the collaboration among students as well as their interaction with the instructor leading to better academic performance. In this context adoption of online tools for education coupled with a relationship management approach to enhancing the relationship quality between students and instructors can help increase students' attendance and engagements (Snijders et al, 2020).…”