Faculty support and student engagement in undergraduate engineering

Abstract

PurposeThis study investigated how behavioral and emotional forms of engagement are associated with faculty support and student-faculty interactions among engineering students.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative research methods were used to analyze survey data from 781 undergraduates in seven large undergraduate engineering courses. Linear hierarchical regression models were used to evaluate the relationships between demographics (gender, race/ethnicity, family education, US status and transfer status) and student engagement and between faculty behaviors and engagement.FindingsFaculty support was consistently, significantly and positively linked to all forms of student engagement, while student-faculty interactions were significantly and positively linked to effort and positive emotional engagement and negatively linked to attention and (an absence of) negative emotional engagement. Gender, race/ethnicity, international student status and transfer status significantly predicted at least one form of engagement.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough this was a single institution study and cross-sectional, the findings suggest that faculty support and student-faculty interactions, while important for engagement, have different effects on different types of students. Faculty and teacher professional development efforts should raise awareness of these differences in order to enhance diversity and inclusion in engineering courses and curricula at all levels.Originality/valueThe analysis of behavioral and emotional forms of engagement represents more of a motivational lens on engagement in contrast to the traditional focus on time-on-task or time spent in fruitful educational practices, as is the norm with much of the engagement literature in higher education.

Practices and perceptions at the COVID‐19 transition in undergraduate animal science courses

“…Our study is the first to our knowledge to report variance component estimates describing students' educational experience in remote courses within a single university department. However, our results were consistent with Wilson, Summers, and Wright (2020) in which multi-level modeling showed significant faculty impacts on student educational experience in seven in-person courses within a single university department. In line with past research on in-person instruction, our findings showed that instructors significantly impact student perceptions of the classroom cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence, which has implications for student educational experience and satisfaction outcomes (Burgess, 2018;Umbach & Wawrzynski, 2005).…”

Useful Teaching Strategies in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine) Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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