Analyzing Effect Factors Of The Undergraduate Students’ Course Engagement

Student engagement is a hot topic in international higher education research field. Although Chinese scholars pay more and more attention to student engagement, our research is still at initial stage. Actually, research into student engagement embodies the idea of "student’s learning and development centered education", having a significant meaning for evaluation of qualities of higher education, teaching and cultivation of talents.For exploring the status quo of undergraduate students’engagement and its effect factors, this research uses grounded theory as approach, which is one of strategies of qualitative study. The case is H University. The sample is nine full-time sophomores and two faculty members. Apart from deep interviews of those subjects, the author conducted observation of the classroom activities. According to the procedures of grounded theory, the author made coding, analysis and induction of the documents collected. Finally, the author constructs a theoretical model of analyzing undergraduate students’engagement with curricula, of which the subcategories was interpreted with some descriptive materials.Constructivist theory of learning sheds lights on this research. Constructivist argues that learning is a process of construction based on the obtained experiences. Moreover, individual’s learning undergoes in a particular historical and societal background and is a kind of negotiation between individuals and their environment.Through analysis of undergraduate learning behavior in the periods of pre-class, class, and post-class, the author found that they are lack of activeness, and that both the effectiveness and the level of engagement are low. The key effect factors of student engagement are cognitive, emotional and institutional. The cognitive factor refers to undergraduate acquired experiences playing a basic role in students’learning. As non-intellectual factor, the emotional aspect plays a dynamic role demonstrating students as master of their learning. The institutional aspect plays a implicit role in students’learning in that undergraduate students are individuals on the one hand and are social members on the other. As for variance between individuals, those three factors may have different influences. They are not isolated and contradicted with each other. Rather, they are interactive and as a whole exert influence on student engagement.Finally, based on analyses of effect factors above, this research proposes approaches to enhance undergraduate students engagement. First, we should help students to make a good preparation for their construction of knowledge by cultivating undergraduate students’non-intellect, encouraging students’initiative, activating students’interest in learning, challenging students’vision, and improving students’ meta-cognitive monitoring ability. Second, we should build a bridge between theory and practice for strengthening students’cognitive and practical abilities. In this case, situational teaching method and cooperative&explorative teaching method would make a difference. Third, we should reform our institution and optimize curricula design, change the system of evaluation of teaching with more emphasis on process evaluation, students "proximal developmental zone," and to some extent, increase the level of academic challenge.