Author(s): Stephen Asunka & Daniel Okwabi Adjin

Student Engagement

Engagement simply represents participation in any enterprise by self-investing personal resources, such as time, physical energy, and cognitive power. In Academia, the concept of Student Engagement is a multi-dimensional construct – Academic, Affective, Behavioral & Cognitive.

Studies have generally established a positive correlation between some or all of the aforementioned aspects of student engagement, and school achievement parameters such as student grades, class attendance, school completion, participation in school and extracurricular activities etc.

The reverse has also been proven to be the case, i.e. student disengagement or disaffection with school leads to low participation in learning activities, weak grades, cheating in tests, low enthusiasm for school related activities and possibly drop out

As educators, we need to create learning conditions, processes and activities that will help foster student engagement, and thus increase chances of attaining
improved learning outcomes