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Dear all
I’ve just changed role and am taking on a role with a strong focus on student engagement.
I feel that the term ‘student engagement’ is often a bit fuzzy and appears to include at least three distinct areas of work:
· Engagement with the curriculum (Kuh, NSSE and friends)
· Engagement with QA processes (QAA in particular)
· Engagement with the wider university community and beyond (clubs & societies, students’ union politics, causes, self-perceptions as societal change agents etc.)
I’m looking a lot at the QA literature at the moment and am really struck by the fact that it doesn’t problematize student engagement enough. In an age where young people are apparently less engaged with political movements, or see themselves as less capable of transforming society for the better, why would they naturally sign up to being involved in processes and mechanisms to change the way that universities operate?
I wanted to just check whether or not this is a valid assumption and have been recommended: http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/research/public-attitudes/audit-of-political-engagement/. There are also reports in the Understanding Society resource, for example https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/2013/08/01/cultural-activities-linked-with-young-people-volunteering
I also use the Sodexo Student University lifestyle survey http://avanconspourluniversite.sodexo.fr/documents/student-survey-uk.pdf for background reading about students
I find stuff like this quite useful for helping to avoid assumptions and wondered:
· Does anyone else have useful evidence about young people engaging/ disengaging generally?
· Does anyone have useful reports that they refer back to help keep an overview of the current student body?
Hope you don’t mind the Friday puzzler
Ed
Ed Foster
Student Engagement Manager
Nottingham Trent University
0115 848 8203
NTU is hosting the European First Year Experience Conference, 9-11 June 2014
Deadline for submissions Friday 24 January
#EFYE2014
