An Empirical Study On Student Engagement In Online English Class For Engineering Postgraduates

Student engagement is an important factor affecting students’ learning process,academic achievements and the effectiveness of teaching reform(Fredricks,2004).When the novel coronavirus pneumonia broke out in 2020,universities and colleges in China were required to actively use the e-platform and information technology to carry out online teaching and learning,which have pushed online education to move rapidly.However,some studies have found that online learners have poor learning autonomy and low efficiency in the process of learning(Liu,2019;Tuckman,2007).Therefore,the study of online education and student engagement has received growing attention.But the related research achievements are still insufficient,especially in second language acquisition fields.Based on Philp and Duchesne’s(2016)theory of student engagement and its dimension,the present study took 79 engineering postgraduate students from a science and technology university as research subjects,using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to carry out an empirical study on student engagement in online engineering postgraduate English class during the epidemic period in the spring semester of 2020.Three research questions were probed in the study:(1)What is the overall situation of student engagement in online English class for engineering postgraduates?(2)Is there a correlation between online student engagement of engineering postgraduates and their English achievements? If so,which dimension is correlated to their English achievements?(3)What factors affect student engagement in online English class for postgraduates?Major findings of this study were as follows.(1)The overall level of online English student engagement of engineering postgraduates in this school was at a high level.Among them,behavioral engagement yielded the highest level,and the average of emotional engagement was the lowest.(2)Pearson correlation coefficient analysis showed that there was a significant positive correlation between behavioral engagement and English achievement.The correlation between online student engagement and English achievement was relatively low,while cognitive engagement,emotional engagement and social engagement had no correlation with English achievements.That is to say,the more behavioral engagement students invested,the higher English achievement they would attained.Behavioral engagement,especially related to achievements,played an important role in postgraduates’ English learning.(3)As for influencing factors of online student engagement,the interview data provided that students’ interest and motivation played influential roles in student engagement.The harmonious teacher-student relationships and good learning environment influenced student engagement and school institution also held an important position.In all,the results showed that behavioral engagement related to achievements played an important role in the online student engagement of engineering postgraduates.Schools and teachers should promote the online evaluation system,pay more attention to the emotional engagement and function the performance to improve online student engagement.