People matter: The role of peers and faculty in students' academic engagement

Abstract

This paper presents findings from an engineering education study whose results lead to suggestions for best practices to improve the teaching and learning experience in engineering classrooms. Over the past four years we have been exploring the role of a student's connection to community on his/her engagement with academics, both in terms of behaviors and emotions. Specifically, we have sought to better understand the specific factors affecting a student's sense of belonging and community, as well as the effect of faculty and various communities on student academic engagement. In order to examine these, we have conducted faculty and student interviews, student focus groups, classroom observations and student surveys, all at each of five very different universities. We have analyzed the resulting data set using a combination of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. The following are findings from this study which are relevant for engineering faculty teaching courses. Regarding belonging, our student surveys show clearly that a) a student's sense of belonging in classes and major is strongly associated with academic engagement and other positive outcomes, and b) faculty and peer support of a student are correlated to the student's sense of belonging primarily at the class and major level. Regarding academic engagement, students report in interviews that faculty behaviors influence student academic engagement, and that small adjustments to faculty behavior could improve student engagement. When observing classes, we observed that lecture still predominates in the engineering classroom; however, we observed a modified lecture style that was occasionally used, in which we observed a high student academic engagement and faculty interaction that typically occurs only in active learning environments. Beyond the classroom, additional student interviews revealed that informal academic communities, especially lab groups, study groups, and faculty-led groups, are valuable to most students, but not all. Further, participation in non- Academic communities (e.g., extracurricular activities) provides opportunities for many students to meet belonging and safety needs (anxiety and stress reduction) which in turn, support better student academic engagement. This paper explores these findings in more detail and includes practical interventions (actions) that faculty can readily implement with the goal of increasing student academic engagement. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.