Key Indicators of Student Engagement

This chapter presents an analysis of the quantitative and qualitative empirical data from across the three courses, two in China and one in the UK. They were garnered from students’ responses to the questionnaire and their group and one-to-one interviews. The analysis of the quantitative data derived five factors of student engagement. The analysis of the qualitative data identified 28 key indicators that influenced students’ engagement and these were categorised into six themes. A comparison between these analytical categories showed that there were remarkable similarities; of the six themes identified in the qualitative analysis, five matched well with the five factors. The six themes were: history-in-person, effectiveness of teaching practices; personal development; campus environment; learning styles and quality of interactions. ‘History-in-person’ was the category evident only in the qualitative data. Thus the resultant conceptual framework that was generated from the empirical study had six themes and was supported by the analysis of both the quantitative and the qualitative datasets.