Student engagement in the first year of university in Wales during COVID-19

This article reports on a study which evaluated five dimensions of first-year university students’ engagement in Welsh universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study utilises a student engagement scale which was previously used with undergraduate students in Australian universities. Our findings provide insights on five dimensions of student engagement including academic, intellectual, peer, student-staff and online engagement which were explored during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings indicate that the Student-Staff Engagement scale obtained the highest mean value, and the Academic Engagement Scale acquired the lowest score. The highest and lowest engagement-scale items in this study illustrates the shifting profile of first-year students who demonstrated contrasting study habits, forms of communication with peers and interactions with university staff to pre-pandemic students. The results also indicate that engagement is a complex concept and further work is required to better understand student engagement within contemporary universities which have embraced a hybrid mode of teaching and learning. The paper calls for a more robust theorising of the engagement concept and the authors of this article argue that the online dimension of student engagement requires expanding to mirror the experiences of undergraduates studying in the hybrid university.