Research pick: Engage with the machine for student success - "Impact of engagement on business students’ academic performance"

Research concerning the behaviour of business students shows that the factors most commonly associated with classroom participation, attendance, speaking up, and joining in, may matter less for academic achievement than the emotions of learners.

The research, conducted with 118 business students, discusses in the International Journal of Monetary Economics and Finance how different forms of engagement affected academic performance during the pandemic. Engagement, a concept widely used in educational research, refers to the level of involvement and connection students bring to their studies. It is generally understood to operate across four dimensions: behavioural, social, cognitive, and emotional.

Behavioural engagement covers outward signs such as attendance, punctuality, and finishing assignments and projects. Social engagement refers to interactions with peers and lecturers, whether in discussion or collaboration. Cognitive engagement relates to the intellectual effort students devote to grappling with material. Finally, emotional engagement describes the student’s feelings of enthusiasm, interest, or their sense of belonging in the learning environment.

The research found that only the internal dimensions, cognitive and emotional engagement, had an obvious positive impact on academic performance. Students who invested intellectual effort and maintained an emotional connection to their studies tended to achieve stronger results, even if they were less visibly active in class. In contrast, behavioural and social engagement showed no measurable effect on outcomes.

This pattern, the research suggests, reflects the unique conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and beyond. Teaching moved largely online and so the conventional external markers of engagement, such as classroom discussion, group exercises, and collaborative tasks, were no longer useful as they barely existed in these uncertain times. In their absence, success depended largely on a student’s ability to sustain motivation and intellectual focus while they were in isolation. The study’s findings indicate that students who were able to marshal their internal resources fared better academically than those who relied on external forms of participation. Obviously, such insights could have a bearing on education in the future when we face a similar crisis again.

Anatan, L. (2025) ‘Impact of engagement on business students’ academic performance’, Int. J. Monetary Economics and Finance, Vol. 18, Nos. 2/3, pp.206–214.