Unpacking Student Engagement within Higher Education

This dimension involves the active participation of students in the learning process, challenging their preconceived notions, cultivating program-solving skills, and promoting critical thinking. 

In a world that demands adaptability and innovation, fostering cognitive engagement is crucial for preparing students for the challenges they will face outside of the classroom and beyond graduation.

Courses that stimulate cognitive engagement often incorporate interactive discussions, problem-solving activities, and projects that encourage students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world scenarios. Additionally, the integration of technology and collaborative learning platforms can enhance cognitive engagement by providing students with dynamic, immersive learning experiences.

Bloom’s taxonomy provides a popular model for faculty and co-curricular program leaders to develop learning outcomes. Developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom with collaborators Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwoh, the taxonomy is composed of six categories—each of which is progressively more challenging than the last as learners expand and deepen their learning:

1. Remembering: recalling facts and basic concepts from recent or long-term memory
2. Understanding: constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages
3. Applying: using recalled information in novel situations
4. Analyzing: drawing conclusions from ideas 
5. Evaluating: making judgments based on criteria and standards 
6. Creating: putting elements together to produce new work

Most first-time students will be used to the first category; exams in their K-12 education test their recollection of information. It is then each institution’s duty to challenge learners to engage with course content and co-curricular concepts on a deeper level—incorporating activities, exercises, and experiences to move students across all six Bloom’s taxonomy elements.

This dimension involves students' emotional connection with their academic pursuits, peers, and the overall campus environment. Feeling a sense of belonging, motivation, and enthusiasm for learning are key indicators of emotional engagement. 

Emotional engagement is key to any institution’s mission and success, as a student who is emotionally engaged is far more likely to persist within their degree program and be retained by the institution. 

Positive emotional engagement can compel a student to overcome academic barriers, leverage student support services, pursue ambitious goals, and contribute to their surrounding community. 

Behavioral engagement involves observable indicators of cognitive and emotional engagement. 

Inside the classroom, a student who is highly engaged within this dimension will ask the instructor questions and assert their viewpoint during discussions. They may also take notes, lead group projects, and volunteer to give presentations.

Behavioral engagement also expands outside of traditional course experiences. Active participation in extracurricular or co-curricular activities, service learning, and community engagement are all essential components of behavioral engagement within modern higher education. 

Incorporating interactive activities in both academic and co-curricular programs can enhance engagement, as can using a variety of instructional strategies to cater to different student learning styles. 

Clear communication is also essential for capturing students’ interest, and the instructor’s passion for a subject can keep a student invested in the course. 

Active learning strategies—such as group discussions, case studies, presentations, and hands-on research—can stimulate cognitive engagement. 

By moving beyond traditional lecture-based approaches, instructors can create environments that empower students to participate in their learning processes actively. 

Courses and co-curricular experiences that demonstrate real-world applicability and relevance to employer demands drive greater student engagement than lectures or discussions based on theoretical or outdated ideas. 

Integrating interdisciplinary topics can also foster deeper engagement, as students can draw connections across themes addressed within multiple courses and fields. 

The physical layout and atmosphere of the classroom, meeting space, or event hall can impact how well students are able to focus on the subject matter. Faculty and staff should work together to design spaces that are comfortable, well-lit, and organized. 

Accessibility services should also be consulted to ensure that all spaces are physically accessible and welcoming to students with physical, mental, and learning disabilities.

Students who have positive relationships with professors and support staff are more likely to ask questions, actively participate in discussions, and aim to contribute positively to their learning environments. Instructors should aim to be approachable, demonstrate genuine interest in students' success, and provide timely, constructive feedback. 

Meeting with students outside of the regularly scheduled learning experience can also help foster positive relationships. This can involve faculty holding office hours and support staff—including academic advisors, career counselors, residence hall staff, and Student Affairs leaders—joining students at campus events, attending student-run programs, and leading field experiences. 

Emotional engagement thrives in a supportive and inclusive campus environment. Institutions should prioritize creating spaces wherein students feel heard, respected, and valued. This can involve establishing mentorship programs, providing mental health resources, and promoting a culture of diversity and inclusion.

Leveraging educational technology tools can make the higher education experience more dynamic and relevant for students of all ages and demographics. 

For example, student engagement portals reduce barriers to co-curricular engagement by centralizing all resources into one shared hub. Communication tools, such as text messaging, allow students to communicate with students and explore opportunities on their own schedule. 

Scheduling tools make it easier for students to build course schedules that fit around their non-academic obligations and interests. 

The role of support services in fostering cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement can not be overstated. Tutoring services, writing centers, and academic advising help students develop essential study skills and time management strategies—which are crucial for engaging thoughtfully with course materials and performing well within the classroom. 

Meanwhile, career counseling can motivate students to connect their academic pursuits to their career aspirations, and orientation programs—along with ongoing opportunities like First-Year Experience programs and leadership programs— help students connect with the broader campus community.

Regular, timely, and constructive feedback from faculty and staff helps students understand their progress and areas for improvement. Better yet, encouraging students to evaluate their own learning encourages deeper investment in the learning and skills development process. 

By regularly encouraging students to self-reflect, institutions help students better articulate their skills to employers, understand the immense value of co-curricular learning, and appreciate feedback from mentors and peers.

A student’s mental, emotional, and physical health is intrinsically tied to their ability and willingness to engage with the opportunities around them. Physical and mental illnesses—along with stress, anxiety, and depression—provide enormous barriers to student success. 

Students who are unable to develop healthy coping mechanisms and leverage appropriate support systems will often fail to persist in their academic studies.

Worries about financial stability can harm engagement. A student who struggles to afford tuition, books, housing, living expenses and other personal costs may be unable to fully invest in their studies.

Additionally, needing to work part- or full-time may prevent some learners from joining student organizations and attending campus events.

National surveys like the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) provide standardized measures of student engagement. 

Additionally, institutions can create custom surveys to measure specific aspects of student engagement, focusing on areas like classroom experiences, extracurricular involvement, and overall satisfaction.

Not only can self-reflection forms and activities deepen student engagement in and of itself, but such practices can provide institutions with valuable assessment data through evidence of students’ self-development and growing engagement. 

This blog post provides ideas for self-reflection exercises, along with best practices for cultivating a campus culture that values continuous self-reflection among students. 

Focus groups and interviews can provide valuable qualitative data to complement quantitative measures. By speaking with students individually and within small groups, institutions can explore student experiences and perceptions in depth. 

Anecdotes and insights from interviews and focus groups can form theses for later research that can be expanded to a wider sample. 

Learning Management System (LMS) data can offer insights into how students engage with digital resources, participate in virtual discussion forums, and complete online assignments. Relatedly, tracking digital engagement data can allow an institution to understand how frequently and for how long students interact with online materials. 

In addition to understanding current student engagement, website analytics can also be valuable to admissions and alumni teams. 

By understanding how alumni and prospective students engage with the institution’s website, professionals can make changes that better reflect the interests of their core audiences. 

Within the classroom, regularly monitoring attendance can offer a basic indicator of student engagement with course content. Keeping records of student participation in class discussions, group activities, and other interactive elements provides additional insights.

Analyzing student performance on exams, projects, and assignments can offer insights into each learner’s level of cognitive engagement. Faculty should be sure to establish clear criteria and use rubrics in order to assess the depth and breadth of engagement.

Assessment is critical to understanding student engagement within clubs and organizations, campus events, service-learning projects, and other co-curricular opportunities that promote development outside of the classroom. 

As we explored within The Student Affairs Guide to Data-Informed Decision-Making, co-curricular experiences can be measured through surveys, polls, interviews, focus groups, and participation data. 

Modern Campus Involve makes assessing student activities particularly easy, with a real-time analytics dashboard, dynamic visual reporting, custom demographic attributes, and more. 

The percentage of students who persist from one semester or academic year to the next may also be indicative of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement. Similarly, institutions may find that high graduation rates correlate with positive high student engagement, as graduation requires an advanced level of classroom success.

Programs, initiatives, and events overseen by Student Affairs don’t merely provide extraneous fun; they’re essential for transforming a sprawling institution into an inclusive community and fostering loyalty among students. How well an institution engages its students outside of the classroom can even make or break its retention rate. 

These can include orientation programs that help students acclimate to the higher education experience, clubs and organizations promoting social interactions, community-building, and leadership development, and residential life initiatives that enhance students’ connections with their peers.

Leveraging technology is crucial for creating interactive and dynamic learning experiences, especially for Gen-Z and millennial learners who don’t just appreciate technological integrations; they expect it.

Colleges and universities should consider introducing digital maps and virtual tours that simulate the campus experience for prospective learners, class schedule optimization tools to connect students with appropriate course schedules each term, conversational text messaging that’s enhanced by AI to connect students with staff resources 24/7 and a student engagement portal to streamline, enhance and incentive involvement. 

Institutions with non-traditional students and lifelong learning programs—including Continuing Education, Workforce Development, and Corporate Training courses—can benefit from management systems specifically designed for such learners. 

Modern Campus Lifelong Learning, for example, enhances the digital experience for students through simplified registration and re-enrollment, verifiable credentials, self-service portals, and more. 

Linking academic and co-curricular concepts to real-world scenarios enhances the practical relevance of coursework and student leadership initiatives. These can often come in the form of high-impact practices (HIPs) —long-term experiences that are intentionally designed to foster student success. 

These practices can include internships and co-ops, industry partnerships, first-year seminars, living-learning communities, service projects, student abroad programs, capstone projects, and field experiences. 

In addition to driving student engagement, high-impact practices are also positively associated with increased GPA and retention, increases in critical thinking and writing skills, and higher rates of student-faculty interaction.

As we explored in a previous blog post, investing in students’ mental well-being is both a moral imperative and a crucial strategy for ensuring the institution’s own prosperity.

Common stressors—including social isolation, academic pressure, and financial stress—along with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses can impede a student’s ability to succeed inside the classroom and prevent them from engaging in co-curricular opportunities.

To help students cope with transitional challenges and improve their mental health, institutions should provide counseling and therapy services, empower students to leverage academic resources, increase access to financial aid and scholarships, and promote a welcoming environment. 

Mentorship is a powerful tool for guiding students on their academic and personal journeys. A 2021 survey even found that students with strong mentor relationships are more confident in their career ambitions and workforce readiness. 

Mentorship can come in the form of peer mentors whom students can confide in, faculty or staff mentors who offer academic and career guidance,  and alumni mentors who can offer keen career insights and life advice.

• Central Oregon Community College more than tripled its engagement on its website by adding up-to-date occupational data related to each academic program. 
• GEAR UP Kentucky engaged thousands of high school students and their parents in conversations about higher education through more than 105,000 text messages sent within a year.
• Ohio Wesleyan University increased engagement with its website by adding campus maps and virtual tours powered by Modern Campus. Prospective students spend more than double the amount of time exploring these pages on OWI’s website than any other page.

• Carl Sandburg College made course registration a smooth, engaging experience for students by adding intuitive search elements, simplifying digital navigation, and offering interactive features within its course catalog. 
• College for Creative Studies engaged hundreds of previously unengaged students in co-curricular life while quadrupling its number of student clubs and organizations. Implementing a branded, centralized engagement hub powered by Modern Campus Involve was key.
• Brigham Young University expanded and deepened engagement in peer mentorship by connecting mentors and mentees together via two-way conversational text messaging. 
• Valdosta State University exceeded its highly ambitious goal of co-curricular event attendance by 109 percent. What’s more, the university discovered that 95 percent of highly engaged students persisted to the next semester—a retention rate that’s 13 percentage points higher than their unengaged peers. 

• Virginia Commonwealth University engaged more than 35,000 alumni via text messaging powered by Modern Campus Message. 
• The University of Notre Dame increased alumni engagement by designing custom text messaging campaigns. Doing so has also boosted alumni giving, particularly among students who graduated within the past five years. 
• North Carolina State University nearly doubled donations on its annual day of giving simply by texting alumni and leveraging gamification strategies. 

More institutions will leverage physical and digital technologies to create adaptive learning environments that cater to individual student needs and preferences. 

Additionally, a customized curriculum will allow students to design unique learning pathways based on their interests, career goals, and learning styles.

A future in which VR is a regular part of higher ed life isn’t too far off! Using virtual and augmented reality to provide immersive, interactive educational experiences will engage students in fresh, exciting ways. 

Such tech can also be used to attract prospective students to apply or enroll via virtual tours, orientations, and fairs. 

Gamification is already a popular, proven strategy for incentivizing students to engage with experiences outside of the classroom. 

Faculty and academic leaders can follow suit by integrating gamified elements into individual coursework and career pathways. Institutions can fuse academic and co-curricular experiences by rewarding student achievements with digital badges and providing rewards for completed milestones.

For many institutions, COVID-19 necessitated hybrid learning options for the first time. As the Chronicle for Higher Education found, students loved the flexibility offered by hybrid learning models and are keeping the demand high. 

Institutions looking to get ahead in the engagement game should expand their offering of programs that combine online and in-person instruction while investing in new ways to deepen the impact of such programs and market them to more learners. 

In addition to using data to boast about engagement gains, institutions will use predictive analytics to identify students at risk of disengagement. 

Early warning systems will prompt the right institutional staff and faculty to intervene and support students in real time.

Students, especially Gen-Z, are already checking their social media feeds throughout the day. Why not use that to your advantage? 

Institutions can leverage popular and emerging social media platforms for educational purposes, collaborating with influencers and educators to create informative, engaging content. Social media can even be used to offer virtual study groups, academic support communities, and mentorship programs. 

To ensure that instructors can properly leverage emerging technology, institutions should provide faculty and staff with ongoing training. Such training should cover inclusive teaching methods, culturally responsive education, and technology usage.