Assessing Students’ Engagement Experiences in an Undergraduate Education

Voluminous research on student development has documented that the time and energy students at any higher institution devote to educational activities (i.e., student engagement) are the greatest predictor of their cognitive and personal development. This paper looks into the engagement experinces of 1278 randomly selected final year students pursuing undergraduate programmes in an institution of higher learning. The study examines the levels of engagement by faculty, gender and race/ethnic groups. In addition, it also examines the relationship between engagement levels and academic performance. Findings revealed that the level of student engagement in good educational practices is moderate. In comparison, the Engineering students are more inclined to engage in and gain more from their undergraduate experience than their counterparts. In addition, male students were less engaged than their female counterparts. The Chinese students stand out among the other races in this study as being more engaged in their undergraduate experience. However, there was no correlation between student’ CGPA and their levels of engagement. This paper concludes by identifying some key strategic implications for the university in order to focus its efforts to improve students’ undergraduate educational experiences.