Student engagement is a major issue at institutions of higher learning throughout the world. Many students are not learning properly because there is a lack of engagement. More specifically, business schools throughout the country strive to ensure that students are engaged and understand the concepts that are being taught. In the world of business there are many ethical and social implications once students graduate and enter into the workforce as such student engagement is a major concern for educators. The purpose of this discussion is to examine the importance of student engagement, particularly as it pertains to business students.
Importance of Student Engagement
Student engagement is based on the premise that "the more students study a subject, the more they know about it, and the more students practice and get feedback from faculty and staff members on their writing and collaborative problem solving, the deeper they come to understand what they are learning and the more adept they become at managing complexity, tolerating ambiguity, and working with people from different backgrounds or with different views ("Student Engagement")."
According to Rodriguez (2009) many business schools and their faculty are quite concerned with have the ability to design educational processes that are beneficial to students ability to learn. Educators must find a balance between developing students who are critical thinkers and managing the difficulty, doubt, and value conflicts that often arise amongst business students (Dehler, Welsh, & Lewis, 2001). The authors also explain the increasing the "student's level of 'complicated understanding' (Bartunek, Gordon, & Weathersby, 1983), i.e. connecting a critical perspective to content, requires the development of critical thinking skills (Braun, 2004), namely creative thinking, problem solving, visualization, knowing how to learn and reasoning. Business education emphasizes practical applications of...
As such, it limits the capacity of graduates to see unobvious relationships, tolerate ambiguity and engage in deep analysis and critical thinking (Chonko, 1993)."
According to Appleton et al. (2008), student engagement is dependent upon several factors including economic and social disadvantage and advantage. That is, student engagement can be increased when students are presented with the proper resources and the proper support students. When business students have access to resources and support they will excel academically.
One such resource is the development of learning communities. These communities are designed to assist students both inside and outside of the school setting. According to Zhao & Kuh (2004) there are many different types of learning communities, however, most have some common academic and social characteristics. For instance, the same gropus of students usually take classes together. The authors explain that
"Co-enrolling students in two or more course ensures that students see one another frequently and spend a substantial amount of time engaged in common intellectual activities. The experience is even more powerful in terms of learning outcomes when faculty members teaching the common courses structure assignments that require students to apply what they are studying in one course to other courses and assignments. Taken together, these features strengthen the social and intellectual connections between students, which, in turn, help build a sense of community among participants (Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews, and Smith, 1990)."
So the learning communities become a conduit through which students become more engaged because their peers are also engaged in the same activities.…
