How can Student Engagement Impact Student Experience/ Wellness?
Post-secondary academic engagement can have a significant role in a student’s experience of education and wellbeing. Specifically, student engagement has been correlated with increased health promoting behaviors as well as positive mood. One study showed that increased emotional engagement to academic content increased a sense of mental wellbeing for students. Increased academic engagement can lead to an increased performance, which promotes wellbeing in the sense of satisfaction and positive emotions. These feelings can in turn fuel the motivation for a student’s academic engagement.
Therefore, the relationship between academic engagement and wellbeing is bi-directional. The more the student experiences academic satisfaction, performance, engagement, and success, the more the student may experience positive wellbeing that feeds into their motivation to carry on that path.
Student Retention and Success
There is considerable research to link student engagement with success – including growth, personal development, learning, satisfaction, academic performance, and persistence. Student success can look like many things based on the student. Some deem it based on grades, awards and performance that is required to further their academic or career journey. Others may consider success as simply graduating from higher education. However, student satisfaction is a key component regardless of the outcome.
There are five predictors of student satisfaction and academic success:
The degree of course demands.
The depth and type of student-faculty relationships.
Level of inspirational experiences related to academics.
The quality of supportive environment by peers, faculty and staff.
Intensity of caring post-secondary environment.
Student retention within the traditional sense refers to how post-secondary institutions measure
the number of students who stay within post-secondary and how many discontinue higher studies (student attrition). Student retention may be used to measure the level of engagement an institution is able to provide, the environment it cultivates for the students, and the supports it provides.
Student retention in some sense may be a measure used for student success, but this can be considered an institute centric view with the interest of the institute in mind. In some cases, students discontinuing from a class, program or school may be in their best interest and lead to better opportunities for their success.
Four variables for predicting academic success and retention:
- Secondary educational performance, whether it is through grades, participation or the ability for a student to achieve their academic goals.
- Demographic and socio-economic characteristics such as age, income, race, sex, gender and health.
- Collegial integration such as whether students feel integrated within the campus community and feel a sense of belonging.
- Institutional support, financial aid conditions, and overall quality of instruction.