Computer Science Education

ISSN: 0899-3408 (Print) 1744-5175 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ncse20

Student engagement in first year of an ICT degree:

staff and student perceptions

Judy Sheard , Angela Carbone & A.J. Hurst

To cite this article: Judy Sheard , Angela Carbone & A.J. Hurst (2010) Student engagement in
first year of an ICT degree: staff and student perceptions, Computer Science Education, 20:1, 1-16,
DOI: 10.1080/08993400903484396

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Published online: 07 Apr 2010.

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Computer Science Education
Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2010, 116

Student engagement in rst year of an ICT degree: sta and student

perceptions
Judy Sheard, Angela Carbone* and A.J. Hurst

Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, PO Box 197, Cauleld East, VIC, 3145,
Australia
(Received 4 January 2009; nal version received 6 October 2009)

This article reports on a study of student engagement in the rst year of their
undergraduate information and communication technology (ICT) degree at an
Australian university. The study was conducted at Monash University in the
four undergraduate ICT degrees of the Faculty of Information Technology. The
study draws on data collected from sta and students using interviews and a
start of semester survey. Three aspects of engagement broadly classied as
behavioural, cognitive and aective are used as a framework to analyse the
data. Results show that sta perceived students as demonstrating low levels of
engagement in their university study. Students presented many reasons to
explain the nature and extent of their engagement. Many of their reasons relate
to studying in an educational landscape of changing lifestyles and work patterns
and a strong reliance on technology to support their learning. This article re-
conceptualises the undergraduate student learning experience in the current
tertiary climate. Implications of the perceived lack of student engagement are
discussed and recommendations are made for ways to increase the level of
student engagement.
Keywords: engagement; disengagement; rst year experience; learning experience

Introduction the tertiary teaching and learning environment

The life of a tertiary student is now quite dierent from that experienced by students
one or two decades ago. There have been many changes in the tertiary educational
environment as universities adapt to an increasingly diverse student population.
Arguably, the most signicant change has been the increased use and reliance on
technology. Dierent forms of technology are used to address issues of eciency,
exibility, access to resources, alternate teaching modes and enhancement of the
student learning experience. From a dierent perspective, changing lifestyles and
work patterns have led to competing demands on students time, and these have
caused a shift in the way they view their university experience (McInnis, 2001).
In the context of these changes, there are concerns about the falling levels of
student engagement (or rising levels of student disengagement) from the tertiary
educational system. Studies of trends in student engagement have shown that

*Corresponding author. Email: angela.carbone@infotech.monash.edu.au

ISSN 0899-3408 print/ISSN 1744-5175 online

2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/08993400903484396
http://www.informaworld.com
2 J. Sheard et al.

students are spending less time on campus and less time in face-to-face contact with
their teachers. A nding from the USA National Survey of Student Engagement
(NSSE)1 revealed that over the course of their undergraduate years, students
become increasingly disengaged from, and disillusioned with, the higher education
experience (Barone, 2005). There is growing recognition of the importance of
understanding student engagement and the problem of disengagement in tertiary
institutions. Investigating factors aecting engagement and disengagement can
provide insights into student performance, progression and retention. Assessment of
engagement is potentially useful when evaluating the quality of student learning
experiences and making decisions about resource provision, course content and
delivery (Coates, 2007).
This article investigates the concept of student engagement and its relevance to
the tertiary learning experience. It then reports on a study that investigated
engagement of information and communication technology (ICT) students in their
rst semester of university. The study considered the perspectives of sta and
students. Implications of lack of engagement are discussed and recommendations are
made for ways to increase levels of student engagement. Although situated in ICT,
these ndings are more widely applicable.

Engagement in tertiary education

The concept of engagement as related to the student university experience is
generally acknowledged as a multi-dimensional phenomenon that may result from a
variety of factors relating to the individual and the context in which they are learning
(Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Researchers have proposed a variety of
dierent ways to describe student engagement, indicating the complexity of this
concept. Chickering and Gamson (1987) developed a set of engagement indicators,
Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education which has guided a
body of research into student engagement. Schlechty as cited in Murray, Mitchell,
Gale, Edwards, and Zyngier (2004) presented ve forms of engagement that range
from engagement through to disengagement. In a large multi-institutional study of
early-year undergraduate students across four disciplines, Coates (2007) identied
two broad areas of engagement which encompass academic and social aspects and
apply across online and traditional modes of study. In his view:

engagement is seen to comprise active and collaborative learning, participation in

challenging academic activities, formative communication with academic sta,
involvement in enriching educational experiences, and feeling legitimated and supported
by university learning communities. (p. 122)

A conceptualisation of engagement that comprises three constructs of

behavioural, cognitive and aective engagements has been widely used. These
constructs essentially cover the same aspects as those described by Coates and may
be dened as:

. behavioural refers to participation in academic, social and extracurricular

activities;
. cognitive concerns involvement in learning, motivation to learn, willingness
to exert eort to learn dicult concepts and skills, the use of strategies; and
 Computer Science Education 3

. aective encompasses emotional aspects, feelings, attitudes, and perceptions

towards the educational environment, relationships with teachers and
classmates.

The behavioural, cognitive and aective constructs were reviewed extensively by

Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris (2004) in their investigation of student engagement.
Kong, Wong, and Lam (2003) developed an instrument for measuring student
engagement based on these constructs. Many studies have used these constructs in
investigations of student engagement (e.g. Archambault, Janosz, Morizot, & Pagani,
2009). Although most studies found had been conducted in the primary and
secondary school systems, the three engagement constructs have also been applied in
research of university students. These studies demonstrate that the behavioural,
cognitive and aective constructs provide a useful framework for studying this
complex topic. We will use these constructs as the framework for this investigation of
student engagement.

Student engagement and learning

A number of studies have investigated tertiary student engagement and its
relationship with learning outcomes and learning experiences. A large USA study
by Carini, Kuh, and Klein (2006) found links between engagement and the
academic performance of university students. This study used the NSSE instrument
that assesses the extent to which students devote time and energy to educationally
purposeful activities (p. 4). This comprehensive questionnaire of 70 items covers
the three engagement constructs identied by Fredricks, Blumeld, and Paris
(2004).
A relationship between behavioural engagement and student success has been
shown in a number of studies. An Australian study by McKenzie and Schweitzer
(2001) found that full time students with no employment had higher grade point
averages than full-time students with part-time work who consequently had less time
to spend on campus and on their study. As Kuh (2004) argues:

What students do during college counts more in terms of desired outcomes than who
they are or even where they go to college. That is, the voluminous research on college
student development shows that the time and energy students devote to educationally
purposeful activities is the single best predictor of their learning and personal
development.

It is therefore concerning that a couple of large studies have shown trends of

students spending less time on campus (e.g. Astin, 1998; McInnis, 2001).
Cognitive engagement can be seen as a fundamental requirement for student
learning. For example, a study by Doube, (2008) found a relationship between
student motivation and learning outcomes. Ramsden (1994) proposes that a
challenge in teaching is to provide a context in which students engage
productively with subject matter (np). As evidence for this view, a national
Australian study of rst year undergraduate students found a declining
commitment to study. This investigation reported trends in decreasing motivation
to study, decreasing time spent on study and increasing problems in managing
workload (McInnis, 2001).
4 J. Sheard et al.

Fewer studies were found that have investigated aective engagement in relation
to student learning. Tintos (1993) model of student integration proposed that social
and academic integration into the university system is important for commitment to
university. This model has been used by other studies to explain student attrition
(e.g. Pascarella & Terenzini, 1998). A study by Brew, Beatty, and Watt (2004), albeit
in the school system, found that one of the most important factors in student
engagement was the studentteacher relationship. There are indicators of the
importance of the studentteacher relationship in the tertiary system with studies
that have shown that students prefer a teaching situation where there is a component
of face-to-face interaction (e.g. Kvavik, 2005; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Scott,
2005).

Technology and engagement

The increased use of ICT in education over the last couple of decades has
fundamentally changed the nature of the teaching and learning environment,
aecting the ways in which students engage with the educational system. With the
now common practice of providing teaching resources online, and the availability of
online communication facilities, students have less need to attend classes on campus.
A number of trend studies have found that the current generation of students have
less contact with their teachers and are less likely to ask advice about their work. (e.g.
Astin, 1998; McInnis, 2001). Technology is thus seen as a cause of student
disengagement.
From another perspective, however, ICT (e.g. the Web) can allow new forms of
engagement. Students now have ready access to learning materials 24 h a day and 7
days a week. ICT can be used to engage those who may have been marginalised,
disadvantaged or excluded from traditional education programmes (Candy, 2004).
An analysis of the NSSE survey data showed a strong relationship between using
ICT for educational purposes and engagement in eective educational practices such
as active and collaborative learning and studentsta interactions (Laird & Kuh,
2005). Barone (2005) argues that the new generation of students may not view
technology in the same way as their teachers. The Net Gen2 show a preference for
accessible, interactive, online information sources rather than traditional activities.
Instead of disengaging students, technology may engage students in deeper learning
experiences. Furthermore, although they may value personal contact with their
classmates and teachers, they may not nd online communication as the antithesis of
contact (Windham, 2005).
Whilst there is evidence of changes in educational practice with the introduction
of ICT into tertiary teaching, there are concerns that this technology is often not
used with an appropriate pedagogy (Sheard, 2006). An example of this is when the
use of an online learning management system is mandated while providing little in
the way of pedagogical or technical support for teaching sta. Coates (2005) alerts us
to the following:

. . . sta and institutions do not appear to have considered how learning management
systems aect the way their students learn. Instead there seems to have been a tacit
reliance on serendipity to produce patterns of use constructive for learning. This is
surprising given the resources invested in these potentially powerful learning
technologies and the increasing recognition that the dynamics of student engagement
are often central to the quality of student engagement. (p. 68)
 Computer Science Education 5

A number of researchers take the view that it is not the technology that engages
or disengages the learner but the learning activities and the pedagogy that is used
(Carbone, 2007; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Scott, 2005; Carbone, 2007). As
Windham (2005) states, The simple rule is engagement moving students beyond
being mere participants in the class to become active learners and discoverers
(p. 5.12).

The issue of low levels of student engagement

The many reports of low levels of student engagement give evidence of a problem
that is widespread and endemic. As McInnis (2001) states, Student disengagement
and apparent lack of commitment presents itself as a problem on a daily basis for
academics (p. 3).
However, we also should consider engagement from the student perspective.
With the changing tertiary landscape, especially in the use of technology, student
engagement may be changing in ways that we do not understand. Much of the
understanding of engagement has been gained from studies of campus-based
experiences and may be no longer relevant to educational systems that have a
large online component. McKenzie and Schweitzer (2001) propose that the
characteristic well-integrated student identied in past research may have changed.
With the advent of the Internet and e-mail, the social nature of universities may
be changing, and studying in isolation may have become adaptive for a sub-group
of high achieving students. McInnis (2001) claims there are new forms of
engagement and disengagement to which many institutions have not adjusted. He
argues that the nature of student engagement is changing and if we do not
acknowledge this then we are in danger of ad hoc solutions or over responsiveness.
He proposes that:

We simply do not know enough about the changing motives, values and expectations
of undergraduate students in relation to their level of engagement. To focus on those
who are just working and at risk of failing or discontinuing is missing the point.
(p. 13)

It seems there is a need to explore what it means to engage learners and how this
may be achieved. This suggests that it is timely to investigate the issue of student
engagement in the new educational landscape and this should be done from both
sta and student perspectives. The study reported in this article explores engagement
of ICT students in the rst year of their degree.

Research approach
This article presents ndings from the perceptions project that investigated student
experiences of the rst semester of their undergraduate ICT degree, and the
educators perceptions of their students as learners. The aspect of the project
reported here focuses on student and lecturer perspectives of student engagement
according to the behavioural, cognitive and aective constructs dened in Section 2.
Although not specically questioned on student engagement, during an initial
analysis of interview data the theme of engagement emerged from the responses of
both students and sta, and prompted us to revisit the data with a focus on this
6 J. Sheard et al.

theme. Other aspects of the project are reported elsewhere (Sheard & Carbone, 2007;
Sheard et al., 2008). This section presents details of the research context, design, data
collections and participants in the project.

Project context
The project was conducted in the undergraduate programmes in the Faculty of
Information Technology at Monash University. The Faculty teaches four
undergraduate ICT degrees. These degrees collectively cover a wide spectrum of
the ICT discipline from the technical (Bachelor of Computer Science and Bachelor
of Software Engineering) to the business oriented (Bachelor of Business
Information Systems) and to the application oriented (Bachelor of Information
Technology Systems). The degrees are taught on ve of the six Australian
campuses and in this study data were collected from students and sta at each of
the ve campuses.
In the rst semester of the four degrees, three of the four courses of study are
common to all students. These are: computer programming, computer systems and
IT in organisations. In these courses, students have 2 h of lectures and a 2 h tutorial
held in a computer laboratory each week. At the time of data collection it was faculty
policy that all courses used Blackboard, a web-based course/learning management
system. In the three courses in our study, sta used this system to provide students
with online access to all teaching materials.

Project design
The project was conducted by a team of six researchers from the computing
education research group at Monash University.
The following data collections were conducted:

. mid-semester interviews of rst year ICT students;

. mid-semester interviews of sta teaching a rst year ICT degree course; and
. start of semester survey of students.

The interview questions and survey questionnaire were designed by the project
team and trialled with teaching sta and students. The interviews were conducted by
research assistants from outside the Faculty. All interviews were audio taped and
transcribed.

Participants
In our study, the data were collected from teaching sta involved in teaching all three
courses and rst year students enrolled in these courses.

Sta interviews
All sta involved in teaching the three rst-year foundational courses on the
ve Australian campuses in either rst, second or summer semester were
invited to participate in an interview. Seventeen of the 30 sta agreed to be
interviewed. Of the remaining 13 sta, three were away on leave at the time, ve
 Computer Science Education 7

declined to be interviewed and the remaining ve did not respond to the email
request.
Teaching sta were interviewed during mid-semester following a semi-structured
interview schedule. The interview questions were designed to gather information
about the teaching environment, sta knowledge of and expectations of their
students, and sta perceptions of their students course expectations and how
students were coping in the teaching environment. They were also asked what factors
they considered contributed most to students success or failure in ICT courses. The
interviews were all conducted face-to-face and the duration of the interviews ranged
from 30 to 70 min, approximately.

Student interviews
Students enrolled in the rst year foundational ICT courses on the ve Australian
campuses were invited to participate in an interview. Students were recruited for the
interviews when the survey was administered. A total of 25 students were interviewed
from a pool of 119 volunteers from the cohort of 422 students. The selection of
interviewees aimed for a spread across the four undergraduate degrees, to get a range
of students with dierent areas of interest. There were 22 males and three female
students, all aged from 18 to 25. The proportion of male students was higher than in
the rst year student cohort. Most participants were local students with English as a
rst language (20 out of 25). Only two students reported having attempted to study
an ICT degree previously.
The students were interviewed during mid-semester following a semi-structured
interview schedule. The interview questions were designed to explore the students
experiences of their course and the teaching environment, their study habits and
their expectations of their degree. They were also asked what factors they felt
would contribute most to their success or failure in their course. Twenty-one
interviews were conducted face-to-face and four were conducted by telephone.
The interviews were, on average, 20 min in duration.

Survey of students
The survey of students was conducted on the ve Australian campuses that teach an
undergraduate ICT degree. At the beginning of semester, a paper-based ques-
tionnaire was issued to students during their Computer Systems lecture. Of the 422
students enrolled in this course, a total of 185 students completed the survey, giving a
response rate of 44%. The questionnaire contained mainly closed response style
questions. The items in the questionnaire relating to the study reported here
provided demographic information, students estimates of time spent on study and
outside work and their ratings of interest in aspects of ICT.

Results
For the study reported in this article the sta and student interview data collected
for the Perceptions project was re-analysed using the framework of three
constructs of engagement dened in Section 2. In the analysis, the sta and
student interview scripts were searched for comments that related to the theme of
engagement, using the engagement framework presented in Section 3 as a lens for
8 J. Sheard et al.

analysis. The results are reported under the three constructs of behavioural,
cognitive and aective engagement. Where relevant, data are also reported from
the student survey data.

Behavioural engagement attendance and participation

Many sta commented on the low level of behavioural engagement shown by their
students as evidenced by poor attendance at class and lack of time spent on study.
Stas were particularly concerned with low attendance at lectures. A typical response:
Attendance rates at lectures are abysmal. Ideally it would be better to move away
from lectures and towards a method with one sta member per group of twenty
students, and then teach to these small groups for the entire semester. There is a cost
issue, of course.

Although we did not collect data on class attendance in this study, several
lecturers commented during their interview that attendance at their lectures was
typically less than half the enrolment. One lecturer reported that towards the end of
semester only 10 students attended their lecture out of a possible 170 students.
Tutorial attendance was higher, with sta reporting typical attendances of 80% or
higher.
In the interviews, the students gave insights into their attendance at classes. A
couple of illustrative responses:

Attended the rst few lectures, I found them dicult to follow. I found that it was more
eective for me just to skip the lectures and do the readings with the [online] lectures
guide. Sitting in the classes to listen to the lectures without an engaging environment did
not encourage learning. During the tutorials is where I learned the most.
I go to tutorials and classes. I dont miss any classes and that helps me a lot. When I go
to lectures, I understand better, and then I have more time left to do other things. I
make sure that I dont miss anything. But many students they dont really come to
class.

Most sta expected a medium to high level of commitment from their students;
however, they claimed that only a small number of students managed to achieve
this. During their degree, students are repeatedly told that they must spend 48 h
per week on their studies for a fulltime load; however, this was only an average
and necessarily varied depending on assessment deadlines. As one lecturer
explained:

The university mandates twelve hours of work per subject, per week. Realistically
students tend to do just what is assessable, and unless something is assessed it will not
get done. It would be ideal to think that students read material because they feel it was
necessary to read, but that is simply not the case. Students will only read material if it is
explicitly indicated that it is necessary to read it and there are marks allocated to it. As a
general rule very few students do background reading.

The data from the student survey supported the sta perceptions of a lower than
expected commitment to study. The median time survey respondents expected to
spend on their university studies was 26 h, far less than the recommended 48 h. In
fact, only 8% of the respondents indicated that they spent the recommended time on
their studies.
 Computer Science Education 9

The level of commitment of students was an obvious area of concern to sta. As

one lecturer commented:

Students are all part-time students now; there are few full-time students anymore. The
international students are under even more pressure, and that pressure strongly
mitigates against their ability to perform well.

Several sta proposed that an important factor in not achieving an acceptable

level of commitment was the students organisational ability. As one lecturer
explained:

Some students do have diculty coping with the work load, and others do not. It is not
because they have too much work; it is possibly because they are not too good at
managing the work load. Occasionally there are students who say they cannot cope and
lecturers must tell them that if they cannot do the 12 h a week of work then they should
consider pulling out of the subject. They reduce their eorts until the time when rst
assignments are due and then all suddenly 3 or 4 are due all at once across their subjects
and they cannot cope.

For many students an apparent lack of organisation could be explained by

competing demands. In some cases, this could be due to outside work commitments.
The median time respondents claimed that they would be working in a job during
semester was 6 h, with 18% spending 15 h or more. In other cases, it was caused by
inconvenient timetabling of courses and course clashes.

Cognitive engagement involvement and investment in study

A number of sta expressed concern about the students level of cognitive
engagement as manifested by their lack of apparent willingness to put eort into
their work:

Few students download and read the web published lecture notes before lectures. Many
fail to show up to lectures and/or tutorials with pens, show an unwillingness to put pen
to paper and would rather communicate via email.

A couple of students provided these explanations for this behaviour:

Some lectures are hard to follow. I cant gain understanding on some materials. I like to
learn by example, better than straight theory. I absorb it really well that way.
A lot less guidance compared to high school. They only give you the weekly topic and
you need to prepare before coming to class. The course guide is very broad, they dont
tell you specic things to study for exam. Need to do a lot of preparation.

In the survey, the students were asked to rate how well they felt that they would
learn in dierent situations. They showed a preference for small interactive classes
rather than lectures or working without a teacher present. As a couple of students
commented:

I think tutorial sessions are useful. I think they are more helpful than the lectures. I
actually learn more in tutorial sessions.
10 J. Sheard et al.

Tutorials provide the educational environment that is similar to high school where students
are typically expected to actively contribute to classes and tutors actively help students.

A key issue from the students point of view was the situation where the level of
work for an assessment task did not seem to match the eort required. As one
student explained:

Computer systems is interesting but I dont like the assignment [work]. There are a lot of
assignments for just little marks. There are around four assignments, two assignments
are only 5% the other two are 10%. Its time consuming. The lecturer keeps giving
assignment week after week. Its hard for me to have time to prepare for other subjects.

However, some sta had a dierent perspective on how the level of work should
be assessed. As one lecturer explained:

I think the system we have where the amount of points that a subject is worth is related
to the number of hours we expect students to work isnt really about the level of
work . . . The level is dened by the objectives and assessment. I expect a high level of
independence, thats how I dene the level of work expected.

Aective engagement relationships and level of interest

A number of sta were concerned with students level of aective engagement. Some
proposed that interest was often associated with motivation. Sta claimed that an
important factor in students success was their level of interest in their degree and the
course content, as one respondent commented:
[Students] come in and think they can get a good job in this area but theyre not
particularly interested in the subject matter so theyre less likely to succeed.

Sta perceived that the students level of interest varied across the courses, and
this was a particular problem with mandatory foundational courses:

Often what is of interest to students is not the [foundational] material which they need
to understand. . . . Students are all keen to learn the applications and the process in
which these things are used, but the drudgery of having to go through and learn the
fundamentals is something they are not altogether interested in and do not cope well
with. That makes it dicult and a challenge for teaching.
[Foundational] courses are going to create problems because dierent student cohorts
are not going to have the same interest in the subject. . . . If they are forced into that
situation they will not respond as well as they could academically if they apply
themselves based on personal choice and interest.

Data from the student survey showed that students levels of interest across a list
of 26 ICT topics varied from high interest for practical topics such as programming
and computer networks to low interest for highly technical topics such as digital
logic or soft topics such as legal/professional/ethical issues. Catering for the needs
of students with dierent levels of interest and ability in the mandatory courses
taught across multiple campuses and into dierent degree programmes, was an issue
reported by many lecturers:

Lecturers have to start with the basics. However, they cannot spend too much time on
the basics and must assume that students that have not done any work in these areas will
 Computer Science Education 11

spend additional time catching up on that material. This is because most of the students
who have started that course have an interest in that area and have therefore exposed
themselves to it through their own personal actions or through subjects that they have
done in high school.
Lecturers cannot expect tutors to hold the rest of the class back for these students, and
may have to get the tutor to give them special attention or separate lessons.

However, another lecturer saw the responsibility of aective engagement lie

squarely with the students:
If students are unhappy it is because they do not come to lectures and tutorials. Most
lecturers doors are open [to students], and many lecturers advise students that if they do
not want to visit them in their oces they can reply to their queries by email.

Several sta suggested that showing interest in students makes a dierence to

their learning experiences and ultimately success in their study. A couple of sta
perceived a strong lack of interest by some sta towards their students, citing as an
example the tendency to post all lectures, exercises and solutions on the Web and
then having students only turn up to the rst and last lecture. One lecturer remarked:

at [a metropolitan campus] academic sta would not know one student from the other
as there are so many.

Most believed that the students were happy with the level of interaction with the
sta. Although one sta member cautioned that it was dicult to generalise across
the whole student body and the dierent year levels.

Ideas for increasing student engagement

Many sta in our study expressed concern at low levels of student engagement across
all three constructs of engagement. Engagement was seen as a key factor in student
success or failure. Consequently, many sta had made eorts to increase student
engagement. Attendance at lectures and work expectations and schedules were
obvious problem areas. Various tactics were suggested, including:

. Hand out printed copies of lecture notes and present more overheads at the
lecture than are posted on the course web site (behavioural engagement).
. Avoid posting tutorial solutions on the web as it discourages students from
attempting to think for themselves (cognitive engagement).
. Provide a lot of feedback; never give students direct answers as this produces
passive learning. Encourage more active involvement (cognitive engagement).
. Require students to give presentations in tutorials (cognitive engagement).
. At the start of semester, walk around the lecture theatre for about 5-10 min as
students are arriving and talk to them very informally . . . students benet from
this approach as they feel less overwhelmed and intimidated, and will open
up (aective engagement).
. Show interest in your students - learn students names (aective engagement).
. Build relationships between the students and sta by personalising the
lectures (aective engagement).
. Personalise the learning experience by using humour and light-heartedness
(aective engagement).
12 J. Sheard et al.

. Canvas students opinions about how they want the learning environment
(aective engagement).
. Create learning communities (aective engagement).

Although most sta were unhappy with the students level of engagement, and
were making eorts to increase it, the students appeared to be happy with the level of
interaction with sta and their learning environment. Under these circumstances,
eorts to raise engagement seem to be a losing battle.

Discussion
Many teaching sta in our study articulated clear views of what they believed
students should be doing to learn. An illustrative comment from one lecturer:

If students know what learning is all about and what it means to them they have few
problems. Learning means being reective, learning is life-long and continues after the
two hours of lectures and two hours of tutorials a week. Attitude is very important, as is
students approach to learning. Transfer of facts, memorisation, exam sitting, none of
this is learning. Students need to learn to grasp concepts and internalise their learning,
they can then re-use it anytime, in any situation. Learning is about long-term retention
of knowledge.

Student engagement in the ICT degrees was examined in terms of three broad
aspects of engagement: behavioural, cognitive and aective. We found clear
misalignment between the sta view of engaged learners and the student behaviour
they observed within each construct.
Most concerning to sta was the low behavioural engagement as evidenced by the
falling attendances at lectures and seen, in part, to be caused by students heavy
commitments to activities outside the university. However, the students in our study
appeared very comfortable with their levels of engagement. The nature and extent of
student engagement appears to be driven by their lifestyles, work patterns, and
increased reliance on technology. It is apparent that these factors are moving students
to a dierent model of learning with less reliance on face-to-face classes and on-
campus experiences. Perhaps the use of delivery methods such as lectures, which
tertiary institutions have relied on for many years, is no longer serving the interests of
students in this technological era. With the advent of web technologies and widespread
use of courseware resources provided via learning management systems, many
students no longer see value in attending lectures. New communication technologies
enable students to communicate via email rather than face-to-face, on campus.
The sta perceptions of low cognitive engagement when, for example, they
observed students with laptops in class rather than note taking with pens and paper,
is perhaps not recognising dierent forms of engagement. Our study found that
engagement at the cognitive level often occurred outside of lectures. Students are
engaging in a dierent way with sta and their educational environment. Sta
perception of low aective engagement was supported by the students responses and
highlighted gulfs between the course content and the students interests and also sta
expectations of learning behaviour and the way the students wanted to learn.
Perhaps, this misalignment could be explained by a cultural clash between the sta
with an academic perspective of computers and the students who are veteran users of
the technology in their everyday life as proposed by Kolikant and Ben-Ari (2008).
 Computer Science Education 13

A key issue was the mismatches between sta and student attributions for low
student engagement. Problems occur when students transfer responsibility for their
own engagement onto the teaching sta, claiming that they lack motivation to attend
class because of their lecturer or the material is not of interest to them. For example,
some students consider that foundational material in mandatory courses is irrelevant
to their study, and then use this to justify their lack of engagement. There is a
perception in many institutions that the customer/student enters into a contract in
which they pay tuition fees, and thus are entitled to receive something in return.
The emphasis is upon the customers rights, and little acknowledgement is made of
the learning responsibilities of the student (particularly the responsibility upon the
student to engage with the material). It is suspected that this may well be a
generational issue, and will require todays students to become the teachers of
tomorrow before it might change.
Apart from the students indicating preferences towards less technical and less
theoretical material we did not nd any insights which were ICT specic. Our
ndings did suggest, however, that ICT educational and communicational
technologies were a factor in enabling changes to behavioural and cognitive
engagement. We therefore now pose the question, Are ICT students less engaged
than who are less familiar with these technologies?
Attempts by sta to increase levels of engagement by adopting some simple
tactics outlined in Section 4.4, were framed in terms of engaging students in the
traditional mode of teaching. These tactics were often set in a pre-technology era and
before the changed lifestyles and work patterns for students. As pointed out by
McInnis (2001), perhaps sta are judging the nature and extent of student
engagement by standards and measures that are no longer appropriate. A possible
reason for this is that the sta view of engagement may be wedded to past
experience, as Entwistle, Skinner, Entwistle, and Orr (2000) explain:

Many lecturers currently have ideas about their teaching which have been strongly
inuenced by their own previous experience as students. . . . Currently rather few of the
sta have had the opportunity to develop an academic discourse through which to
describe and analyse their experiences of learning and teaching.

We propose that sta need to rethink their view of engagement in the current
tertiary educational climate and need to explore dierent ways of engaging students.
Taking a socio-cultural perspective, as suggested by Kolikant and Ben-Ari (2008)
may enable a better framework for understanding this problem. If a more
sophisticated view of engagement is adopted, with a supportive learning environ-
ment, sta will feel less helpless and lacking the strategies necessary to increase levels
of engagement.
The quote from the lecturer that opened this section might be seen as a good
model for learning. Whether these dierent and new ways of engaging are
satisfactory models for good learning was not clear from this study. Students are
engaging in dierent ways to what sta would advise and value, but, in fact, these
new ways may be just as benecial to their learning.

Future work
This study has provided an initial insight into the misalignment between sta
expectations of students and how students approach their learning in the rst year of
14 J. Sheard et al.

an ICT degree. Although this study is grounded in ICT, we believe that many of the
lessons learned can be applied to other disciplines.
As we develop a deeper understanding of students engagement in their learning,
sta perceptions of what engagement entails in a technological era may change. For
example, rather than monitoring lecture attendance to gauge behavioural engagement,
perhaps a more accurate picture is derived from how often students interact with the
online resources. Tracking reports could provide a summary of students online
activities, yet at this stage, details of which activities should be tracked need further
investigation. Another example to gauge the levels of cognitive engagement would be
to oer more interactive activities that provide feedback to both students and sta on
the students current understanding. This is an area worthy of further exploration. We
need to tap into the potential of the new technologies to develop tools that could assist
academics detect early signs of disinterest. Again this is left for future work.

Conclusions
With the rapid changes in tertiary education and the new generation of students,
there appear to be mismatches between sta expectations of students and how
students approach their learning. Technologically rich educational environments
oer many ways for students to engage with their learning, but it is not clear which
avenues provide the best pathways. We need better understanding of our students,
what they are doing, and how they conceptualise their learning experience. Knowing
more about our students gives us the opportunity for tailoring our programmes to
engage students in the learning process. With this knowledge, we can create teaching
and learning environments where sta and students have a common understanding
and mutual respect.
The article provides some explanations towards the misalignment of sta
perceptions of student engagement and the students experience. It has made a small
step towards the re-conceptualisation of the undergraduate learning experience
through examining engagement in a new educational landscape era, which can be
used to better align sta perceptions with students experiences.

Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the contributions by other members of the project team: Selby
Markham, Chris Avram and Des Casey and the research analysts Victoria Heathcote and
Varintra Tui. They thank the students and lecturers for participating in the data collection.
They also acknowledge the nancial support from the Associate Dean (Education) in the
Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia.

Notes
1. NSSE is a large annual national survey of students in US 4-year colleges and universities
which provide information about student participation in activities and programmes in
their institutions, http://nsse.iub.edu/ (accessed 20 September 2009).
2. Net Gen or Net Generation refers to the generation of student who have grown up with
information technology.

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