Relationship between Student Engagement and Academic Network Properties
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2022
ABSTRACT
Student engagement is a significant predictor of students’ academic performance that has shown essential benefits for collaborative learning in higher education. Activities of social networking are common practices for college students to pursue higher academic achievement by taking advantage of collaborative learning. Nevertheless, there is a gap in understanding the relationship between student engagement and academic networking patterns. Using social network analysis, this study quantitatively explored the relationships between student engagement and academic networking at the individual level in the contexts of construction education. The self-reported collaboration and engagement data were collected from only dozens of undergraduate construction students at two universities in the US. The regression analysis revealed a positive relationship between student engagement and their academic network degree centrality. The findings suggest that students are more engaged in the coursework when directly collaborating with more peer classmates. Especially, students who seek collaboration with peer classmates can build great social capital and thus high engagement in class. Implications are finally discussed for construction educators to focus on student collaboration and advance the understanding of student needs.
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Construction Research Congress 2022
Pages: 214 - 223
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Published online: Mar 7, 2022
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