Student Engagement Guidelines: Learning from innovative practices introduced in response to COVID-19. A collaboration of 10 UK modern universities

This project investigates student experiences and student engagement in the post-pandemic world of Higher
Education in the UK. It is a QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project involving 10 Higher Education
Business Schools who have experienced institutional challenges and developed different strategies to maintain
positive student experiences and explore avenues for improvements amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Data was
collected through a student survey and focus groups conducted at each of the 10 participating universities.
As a result of the survey, we gathered significant quantitative data on students’ perspectives on engagement.
Participating students ranked the importance of 31 engagement criteria from ‘not at all’ to ‘extremely’
important, indicating their priorities for what they view as student engagement. Additional questions around
engagement patterns provided insights into the behaviours and student attributes that shaped these
perspectives.
In addition, focus groups provided interesting qualitative insights that complement the survey results, allowing
students to express their views and opinions on studying before, during and after the pandemic. This revealed
compelling findings that elaborate the changes students have undergone during this period, and the
reflections they have drawn from these.
A number of interesting findings emerged from this data. These primarily centre around themes including
timetabling and commuting students, the need for physical and virtual communities, the importance of
recordings for flexible learning, digital literacy and inequalities, and the need to do more to mobilise student
voices. Building on these themes, we discuss their meaning in the context of post-pandemic student
experiences and the need to rethink the idea of student engagement to extend beyond the synchronous
physical classroom experience.