What makes students happy? Factors influencing student engagement using student evaluation data

Abstract

Context: This project began as a simple question to do with class size: Is class size related to teaching? 15,851 responses to a student evaluation survey form called the Course Experience Survey from Semester 2, 2006 in RMIT University were analysed. The sample contained 84% undergraduate and 13% postgraduate science, engineering and technology students. In addition to the information about study hours, age, whether students were part time or full time, we also included information about class size and delivery mode. It was found that class size was negatively related to good teaching [r=-0.25, n=14,280, p=0.000]. That is, students in large classes perceived the quality of teaching as poor. However, the effect of class size on teaching is considered small (Cohen, 1992), which then prompted us to investigate further to see if there were other factors which may influence students’ satisfaction with the course. That is, we tried to tease out the relationship between the various factors associated with student experiences in their courses. Actions taken: We asked if the students’ course satisfaction could be affected by factors such as personal characteristics, motivation, structural and learning environments. We believe that learning environment is one factor that could fall directly under a lecturer’s control to influence a student’s perception of the course in general. We would expect that the more effective the learning environment is, the better student perceptions of the course would be or the better engagement with courses would be.