Abstract
The engagement of students is one of the most pressing issues facing higher education in the 21st century. Around the world, participation rates in tertiary education are on the rise and one of the key challenges facing educators is finding ways to engage these students. We present the results of a project that assesses the impact of an engagement strategy in which a cohort of students entering their first year of university (1) establish and maintain a clear goal of their ideal future career and (2) make use of a web-based digital curation tool to research and present their findings. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategy, which could arguably be applied to a broad range of disciplines given that the majority of students today are technologically literate.Keywords: engagement; goal setting; digital curation; higher education(Pulished: 20 October 2015)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2015, 23: 28337 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v23.28337
Highlights
The transition from school to university has proven to be difficult for many new students
The results suggested that when students perceive the usefulness of school for their future, it could potentially serve as a protective factor against academic disengagement
The researchers, using the survey-building tool Qualtrics, developed a 21-item questionnaire, which was modelled on the validated National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) instrument
Summary
The transition from school to university has proven to be difficult for many new students. The challenges are even greater when the student is the first in their family to attend university (Olson 2013). During their high school years, students are primarily directed by external authority figures. The transition from high school to university requires a shift from an external to an internal locus of control (Astin 1999). Student engagement strategies have emerged as an increasingly important issue in higher education. Building on the above premise, this paper describes the development of a goalsetting strategy that was trialled with a cohort of first year university students
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