Student engagement strategies have varied across post-secondary institutions, especially with the varying needs of students in the past few years. The COVID -19 pandemic, in particular, had a large impact on how students were supported within and outside of classrooms, whether this was due to isolation efforts or when services and programs had to compete for student attention and time post-lockdown. Currently most institutions face similar challenges within academic or social programming; low registration, low turnout, disinterest, burnout, and the gap between the number of services that exist vs. the services students are aware of.
Student Engagement
The Student Engagement Toolkit by the Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health (CICMH) aims to provide an understanding on what student engagement means within different campus contexts, key practices to increase student engagement and spotlights on initiatives that are currently successful. The content within this toolkit may be relevant for post-secondary staff within various departments such as career services, student wellness, learning services, higher level academic administrators such as the dean, as well as faculty. Throughout the toolkit, we will make references to other toolkits by CICMH that informs some of the details such as the Accessibility and Accommodations, Anti-Oppressive Practice and International Student Mental Health toolkits.
This toolkit was created in collaboration with post-secondary campus staff, students and content experts, informed by literature, community of practice meetings, forums and reviewing. Special acknowledgement to Jill Stringer and Ellie Khalifa for contributing pieces to this toolkit, as well as Carli Fink and Alyssa Hall for reviewing from a staff and student perspective. The leads on this project, Taylah Harris-Mungo and Tarin Karunagoda, both bring lived and professional experience on program and academic engagement for youth and students. An EDIAA approach was embedded during the planning, research and writing phases of the toolkit.