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Ashley Gamez
Julie Baker
ENGL 1301 208
2/28/24
Chris A. Boulton: Student Engagement and Wellbeing Over Time at a Higher Education

Institution

Throughout this article ‘’Student Engagement and Wellbeing Over Time at a Higher

Education’’ Chris A. Boulton provides important personal insights and contrasts of the aspect of

the student experience and an enhanced focus on analyzing educational processes using digital

records. For example, in the introduction of the article the author starts off claiming that

engagement has been interpreted differently in literature but, in his case, he believes that it is an

important factor for student success in higher education. As it correlates with the active

commitment and efforts by students in all aspects of their learning counting formal and informal

tasks. Later in the paragraph he adds two ways engagement is used and its state of rate in

different methods of learning ‘’Student engagement has been shown to be related to success in

both online learning and more traditional campus-based higher education settings’’(Chris A.

Boulton 1). Following with what can be acknowledge from the article, readers can get a

perception of how the author will use logos, ethos, and fallacies to support his reasonings and

analysis to persuade them.

Since the beginning of the paragraphs of the article, the author has always made his

purpose clear on student engagement and wellbeing in higher education by including analysis

and vary of data to make sure that readers understand the difference between each term. Further

in the paragraphs, the author introduces the use of digital methods to capture a view of student

behavior, social interactions, academic performances, and wellbeing issues vary dynamically
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during an academic term. Some effects this method had detected is that students have clear

behavioral changes caused by assessments but, it can have a position outcome emotionally on

students and engagement and a negative outcome when it comes to engagement in academic.

Results may vary in a wide range since there are more ways to calculate with different systems

and in the type of activities available. This shows that the author was willing to make bigger

research to support his position by adding the different methods student engagement and

wellbeing can have different calculations and how students can partake in this over time to have

successful results of the student experience ‘’Our research goals are to understand how

engagement wellbeing vary overtime, as well as to determine multidimensional view of student

learning behaviours and patterns’’(Chris A. Boulton 3).

One of the methods included in the article by the author was how he used a survey to

gather information on student engagement in learning for research purposes. This was set for 1st

and 2nd year undergraduate students, the author with the help of his team invited students to

participate in the survey via emails and recruitments booths. This survey consisted of questions

to students about their participation in different learning activities and the variety of activities

online, offline, social, and academic, there were more questions regarding their motivation to

study, how they felt towards their life, and their learning style. While this survey was on for

months a wave of participates kept going students were participating being honest with their

responses because they were set to appear anonymous but, responses were flooding, and the

author showed the different level of scale in each question. The use of a survey was a good idea

to really provide evidence to his point of view of a higher education, readers may gather

information on how much student engagement and wellbeing is taken in the field of education.
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Furthermore, the author included an analysis of his previous research which he

mentioned was meant to look for differences in behavior between sub-populations of the

responses they got from their project. This analysis was based on static and dynamic variables,

static being measure in motivation and engagement style with the addition of their academic

performance with the help of data from the university they had done their research and as for the

dynamic variable it measured the engagement and the wellbeing in every wave of the survey

where students participated in with their responses. After all of that is listed the author mentions

that it can be compared to calculate the correlation of their engagement in activities and their

efforts put into them, the difference between them was shown in mean values rather than in

median values since the data may show differently due to the distribution of the medians may

show different results with how everything was gathered. The author’s analysis showed that the

idea of making students participate in his survey to calculate their learning outcomes,

motivations and efforts really contributed with how to calculate how they change over time and

the reason behind it.

In addition, results from the survey showed all different answers to the questions

provided to students to answer which consist of different factors. With the help of the survey the

author could calculate more about the education students were in and how they felt towards it

and how much they engaged with it. More than that the survey allowed to identify the different

characteristics of each student that participated, the average engagement and their performance,

more about their wellbeing, temporal trends and correlations, the impact of assessments, and the

relationship between behavior and wellbeing. After looking through everything the survey

concluded with its research the author saw the results he has expected, the difference of numbers

between each factor really had an outcome of students emotionally in learning activities and the
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difference of participation in activities. The difference of results really were meaningful despite

the author having a different perspective of them he actually acknowledge that tutors may use

this idea to assist students better and understand their issues better which might benefit them as

they will have the chance to show more support to them and engage with them to really help

them out more and hope that they actually find a solution to their problems.
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Works Cited

Chris A. Boulton: Student Engagement and Wellbeing Over Time at a Higher Education

Institution