This QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project led by Bangor University in collaboration with Grwp Llandrillo Menai is part of a multi-pathway study to understand how students engage in learning to identify and instigate purposeful interventions in relation to social and individual learning and retention with good evidence of effectiveness.

The funding awarded by QAA Cymru was specifically for two postgraduate research students to support the production of an in-depth literature review on psychological and sociological models of student engagement, and teaching interventions using these perspectives.

The study is based on the following groups of research questions: 

• What factors drive student engagement across cohorts, and are there disciplinary differences?  
• What are students’ experiences of group and individual learning? What factors support retention and progression? What factors might support social learning? How do these differ across disciplines and cohorts?  
• How might we define a high-quality intervention in student engagement? What is the focus of this work? How does it compare with the previously reported good practices?   

This report provides an overview of progress achieved within the first six-month period, partially by using funding from QAA Cymru. It focusses primarily on the evaluative literature review of interventions to support student engagement that will form the basis of a toolkit for further interventions to be reported in future.

The report covers three key strands of the project across Bangor University and Grwp Llandrillo Menai to date:

• Mapping of digital profiles
• Overview of focus group interviews with students
• Evaluative literature review of high-quality student engagement interventions 

The report subsequently offers conclusions based on these key components of the project to date.

Project Lead:

Bangor University

Project Partners:

Grŵp Llandrillo Menai