Australia needs a robust survey instrument for measuring 'student engagement'. As data-driven quality assurance expands in Australian higher education, it becomes ever more important to review the nature of the data on which decisions are made. We need to ensure that the best information possible is used to manage and enhance the quality of Australian higher education.

Student surveys have grown to play a significant role in higher education quality assurance, and in the conversations that students have with their university. Regular national surveys include the Course Experience Questionnaire, Graduate Destination Survey and the Postgraduate Research Experience Questionnaire. A number of multi-institutional surveys are conducted for policy research projects and benchmarking exercises. All institutions survey their students on areas such as overall course quality, teaching quality, the student experience, resource provision and graduate destination.

Australia needs student surveys that provide effective measurement of the most important aspects of university education. Current surveys in Australia are high quality, but they focus on teaching, the general student experience, generic skill development, and the provision of resources and support services. There are pockets of activity, but survey practice in Australia does not sufficiently emphasise what students are actually doing. This is in spite of the growing international trend which considers the measurement of 'student engagement' to be the most salient indicator of the effectiveness of university education.

Student engagement is an idea which captures the broad range of educationally significant interactions that learners have with their study, peers, teachers and institutions. Contemporary perspectives focus on students' involvement with activities and environments which decades of research has linked empirically with high-quality learning. The idea concentrates on a student's active contribution to their learning as well on an institution's provision of educational opportunities. While institutions and teachers need to provide students with the appropriate resources and opportunities to make possible and promote specific kinds of interactions, it is students who hold ultimate responsibility for their learning.

There is a big difference, for instance, between 'providing quality library services' and 'whether a student is actually using those services in ways known to underpin high quality learning'. There is a big difference between understanding the general student experience at university, and pinpointing people's engagement in activities which are known to lead to learning. How often, for instance, have students pushed themselves to understand things they found puzzling, sought advice from staff on how to improve their performance, or used online learning systems to make their study seem more relevant?

The incorporation of online learning management systems into higher education presents a vivid example. In the last decade, every university in Australia has invested heavily in these expensive and powerful enterprise-wide technologies. These systems have been seen as a means of increasing the efficiency of teaching, enriching student learning, responding to student expectations, maintaining competitive advantage, substituting for campus-based provision, and responding to massive and increasing demands for greater access to higher education. While online learning systems have been woven deeply into Australian university education, in the excitement of adoption and deployment few if any institutions have sought to determine whether students are actually using the systems in ways likely to engage them in productive learning.

Conversations about student engagement have spread rapidly across North America. In 2005, the National Survey of Student Engagement included over 500 USA institutions, growing from 276 colleges and universities in 2000. Over 970 different institutions have participated in this survey in the last six years. The survey has spread to Canada in the last few years, with over 30 universities participating in the latest round. So far in Australia, only two universities have sought to determine whether their students are engaging in learning in ways likely to generate high-quality outcomes. With the increasing internationalisation of higher education, it is vital that Australia does not slip behind other countries in work on the quality of university education. In certain respects, Australia has been a leader in work on the student experience, but it is essential that focus is not limited to first year students or graduates.

Data on student engagement helps enhance higher education by providing generalisable proxy measures of educational outcomes, and direct measures of involvement in key learning processes. It focuses conversations about educational quality on learning, rather than on more spurious measures such as institutional resources or reputations. By inviting students to consider their participation in good learning practices, the collection of engagement information can itself strengthen students' academic interactions with their university.

Information on student engagement has many possible audiences. It can provide guidance for prospective students about expectations for, experiences with and supports available at an institution. Such information can provide advice for current students on course quality and learning practices. It might provide insight for graduate employers on an individual's involvement with their work. Engagement information is of profound value to university managers and leaders, who can use it for quality enhancement activities, and to understand whether and how students are extracting educational value out of expensive infrastructure and equipment. An accurate understanding of student learning dynamics also plays a critical role in high-quality teaching.

Numbers can have an intuitive and reassuring appeal, but we must ensure they represent the most significant educational phenomena. There is an important gap in the information upon which determinations of quality in Australian higher education are based. Australian higher education institutions presently lack, but would benefit from, a context-sensitive instrument with which to measure student engagement. A performance measure that recognises institutional diversity, yet is capable of providing generalisable information about university education, could play a very important role in assisting Australian higher education institutions to enhance the quality of learning and teaching.

Dr Hamish Coates joined ACER as a Senior Research Fellow in February 2006. He completed his PhD in 2004 at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne. His dissertation on student engagement in campus-based and online education has been published by Routledge.

This opinion article was published in the Higher Education Supplement of The Australian in July ( 'Engage the entire experience,' by Hamish Coates, The Australian, 26 July 2006)

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