Measuring student engagement and learning experience for quality assurance in higher education

Abstract

The rapid expansion of higher education results in ever growing social expectations on the education outcomes and widespread concerns among the stakeholders of the sector about the quality of higher education. As part of the response to such concerns, institutional or national surveys based on different theories are widely used in higher education institutions for quality assurance and benchmarking among universities. Two major schools of theory, student engagement and student learning experience, have guided the development of such instruments in the USA, Australia, UK, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. The measurement of student engagement is multifaceted and differs slightly in the selection of constructs in different regions. Some scholars have criticized student engagement as being too focusing on behavioural engagement and creating a situation where distinguishing whether some constructs represent behavioural engagement and whether they are actually the results of students’ university experience. The measurement of student learning experience is based on how students experience certain features of courses or programmes and their relationship with the approaches students take to their studies. While researchers have argued for the importance of focusing on measurement at the programme level for the quality assurance, it is hard for individual teachers to draw implications from such surveys for quality enhancement. Learning is an incremental process. Measuring good practices at programme level provides little information for instructional decisions regarding individual teachers impact. This paper reviews the definitions of engagement and student learning experience, discusses the major theories shaping the development of such surveys, analyses the dimensions evaluated, discusses the challenges faced when using such instruments for quality assurance in different educational contexts, proposes an alternative approach to commencing quality assurance at individual teacher level, and calls for richer characterizations of student engagement and learning experience.