Session 6 - Strand 2

Abstract:

Student engagement remains one of the most persistent challenges in higher education, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While active learning and continuous assessment have been widely promoted as solutions, there is limited evidence on whether they genuinely change student behaviour or simply reward those already inclined to engage. This session presents emerging work from an ongoing research project examining how continuous assessment combined with active learning influences attendance, engagement, performance and well-being across a large undergraduate degree. Moving beyond single-module studies, the project explores these approaches at programme level and asks a more challenging question: what works, for whom, and under what conditions? A central focus is the extent to which these teaching and assessment strategies affect different groups of students. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach which combines focus groups alongside quantitative analysis, the latter drawing on a rich dataset that explores variation in prior educational background, commuter status, ethnicity and widening participation indicators, alongside differences in motivation, self-regulation and resilience. In doing so, it interrogates the assumption that “good” pedagogic design benefits all students equally. As data collection is ongoing at the point of submission, full results are not yet available. By the time of the conference, however, the session will present findings and critically reflect on the drivers of engagement, outlining practical implications for inclusive curriculum design. It will invite participants to reconsider the role of assessment not just as a measure of learning, but as a driver of student behaviour.