Study Environment Factors

This week I would like to share recent research on factors that affect student engagement and subsequent retention in our courses and programs. The 2022 article, “Study environment factors associated with retention in higher education” by Qvortrup and Lykkegaard classify areas on how we can enhance student engagement.

The authors base their research on “Tinto’s institutional departure model and a literature review of recent international articles on dropout in higher education. The model envisages a study environment as a concept consisting of overlapping domains of a social system, an academic system, and teaching. This article specifies three institutional categories as spanning study environments – the social system, the academic system, and teaching – and discusses how they interact. The research questions are:

What knowledge about institutional factors can be found in recent studies of dropout in higher education?
How can this knowledge contribute to the specification and understanding of the interrelatedness of factors as presented in Tinto’s institutional departure model.”

Specific to Teaching, the authors identify critical factors which include:

Teaching quality - a broad concept operationalized in varying ways. Studies measure teaching quality through the student’s perception of the skills and abilities of teaching staff, with surveys asking about the realization of didactic principles (Arulampalam, Naylor, & Smith, 2005).
Alignment in Teaching - between intended outcomes, teaching/learning activities and evaluation/examination (Biggs & Tang, 2011)
Instructional Clarity concerned with the teacher’s ability to present subject matter clearly and comprehensively (Braxton et al., 2000).
Feedback - central factor according to Hatties (2015) meta-analysis influencing learning. Emphasis is put on the kind of feedback which the student perceives as formative.
Active learning: engaging teaching with discussions and group work - students “doing things” and thinking about the things they do in class (Braxton et al., 2000).
Higher Order Thinking - entails that the students think about the content/curriculum on higher taxonomic levels. This includes thinking critically and being able to engage in arguments about the content/curriculum – as opposed to teaching that promotes rote learning (Lewis & Smith, 1993).
Cooperative Learning - Based on Vygotsky’s understanding of learning, entails active interaction between students. It is suggested that students working with academic content through social interaction with other students are more integrated in the social and the academic system.
Courses on study technique and intro courses - the most prevalent form is first-year seminars, which communicate practical and techniques for studying (Harvey, 2006).
Coherence between courses in the study program - includes alignment between the courses in the study program, clarifying academic progression throughout the program and/or relating course content to what the students have learned in other courses.
Participation in class - strengthens the student’s involvement in their studies and lowers their risk of disengagement.

Finally, the authors argue that there is a need for a new and broadened way of viewing the study environment in which the three systems overlap, as it has become evident that teaching in fact forms part of both the social and the academic system.

References

Qvortrup, A. & Lykkegaard, E. (2022). Study environment factors associated with retention in higher education. HIGHER EDUCATION PEDAGOGIES, 7(1), 37–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/23752696.2022.2072361