Student engagement and barriers to implementation: the view of professional and academic staff

ABSTRACT

The importance placed on student engagement strategies within higher education (HE) and the emphasis on sophisticated and expensive polices by universities has been well documented. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, the main aim of such resource intensive aims is fundamentally to attract students to their institutions. This study investigates student engagement (SE), focusing on both academic and professional staff opinions beyond academic engagement. Interviewing staff (n = 14) who have a role in SE including academic and non-academic engagement, two research aims were investigated namely: what engagement activities are offered and what are the barriers to effectively delivering them. Staff stated that barriers to engaging with their students included lack of resources, operational issues, staff buy-in, centralised structures and dis-jointed systems. Tensions were reported regarding strategic versus operational issues and lack of coordination between professional services and academic departments. Management implications suggested the need for senior leadership involvement and SE strategic planning and mapping of the student journey.

KEYWORDS:

• Student engagement
• higher education
• barriers
• strategic versus operational issues
• student journey
• academic versus professional staff

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruth M. Crabtree

Ruth M. Crabtree teaches within the area of sport management and specialises in sport management pedagogy, in particular curriculum design and student engagement.

Pam Briggs

Pam Briggs holds a Chair in Applied Psychology, delivering innovative research and consultancy around issues of identity, trust and security in new social media.

Herbert Woratschek

Herbert Woratschek is Professor of Sport Management and is Chair in marketing and service management. His research specialise in quality management, value co-creation and price management.