Staff experiences regarding student engagement in active learning and social environments in new generation universities

Abstract

The quest for improved student engagement in active learning and social environments in new generation universities surpasses all prior teaching and learning commitments of educational institutions. While educators are expected to undertake effective steps towards realizing this engagement, it is also incumbent upon students themselves to partake in active learning processes. In tandem with the above, this study was done to establish views of academic staff at the Public University in Ankara, Turkey, regarding the practices of students geared towards realizing student engagement in active learning and social environments. This was done basing on five major dimensions: making student learning meaningful, fostering a sense of competence and autonomy, embracing collaborative learning, establishing positive educator-student relationships and promoting mastery learning orientations. In the findings, dimensions like making students’ learning meaningful as well as promoting mastery learning orientations were found to be highly successful, while fostering a sense of competence and autonomy as well as establishing positive educator-student relationships was found to be moderately successful. Embracing collaborative learning, meanwhile, was found to be at a low level of success. Equally, some statistical differences were found in academic staff’s demographic variable of academic qualification in the dimensions of making students’ learning meaningful as well as promoting mastery learning orientations. However, no statistically significant result was obtained in the gender and professional experience variables.