Research On Student Typology Based On Student Engagement

The modern university emphasizes the student-centered educational idea, which requires a clear understanding of the features of college students, what they do in the university, what they gain from the higher education, and the problems exist in their study, especially in the phase of the mass of higher education, when the number of students increases, so does the student typology. In order to get the scientific understanding of the diverse students, a typological research on them is very necessary. Student engagement is not only the new standard for qualify evaluation of higher education, but also a new perspective of the research on the student typology, so this typological research is based on student engagement, which has a positive meaning for university to take the student-centered educational idea and the method of individualized quality education. The research takes the senior students in H University as the sample, exploring the student typology in H University discussing the different student engagement and learning outcomes of student typologies, and making relevant education teaching suggestions at the same time.This study adopts the empirical research method, collecting data through the questionnaire survey and interview. When designing the questionnaire, National Survey of Student Engagement(NSSE) and College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) are used for reference to divide the student engagement into four dimensions, which are academic performance, student-student interaction, student-faculty interaction and extra-curricular activities, and the last part of the questionnaire is self-reported gains. After using SPSS18to analyze the questionnaire data, the following conclusions are showed: firstly, there are six student typologies in the undergraduates of H University which are Mediocres、Academics、Recreators, Maximizers, Disengaged and Conventionals; Secondly, the overall distribution of the different student typologies is disharmony:Maximizers and Recreators are rare while the Mediocres and Disengaged make up too large proportion; thirdly, there are dramatic differences between different student typologies on student engagement; fourth, there are dramatic differences between different student typologies on learning outcomes.In order to improve the overall student engagement of H University, this study proposes some corresponding recommendations according to the research results:firstly, pay close attention to the educational process so as to increase the student engagement purposefully; secondly, change the teaching mode so as to enhance the academic performance effectively; thirdly, concerned about the quality of teachers so as to heighten the student-faculty interaction efficiently; fourth, implement the excitation education so as to improve the learning outcomes;fifth, adjust recruiting policy so as to moderately reduce recruiting scale.