Commuter Student Engagement
This year we will be working with Liz Thomas Associates to explore student engagement in the context of commuter students. This work recognises that ‘commuter students’, who live away from the university or college and travel to attend, may experience challenges to their engagement beyond the classroom.
This research will highlight how these issues are experienced by students and institutions, and identify changes that can be made to improve engagement and student outcomes.
We are using a broad understanding of commuter students, including any undergraduate or postgraduate students who travel to their higher education provider from their parental or family home (which they lived in prior to entering higher education) rather than having re-located to live in student accommodation (or close to the HEP) for the purposes of studying.
In order to capture the full scope of the student experience we are also using a broad understanding of engagement including:
- Academic: Engagement in their own learning.
- Enhancement: Engagement in co-curricular and enhancement activities (including representation, curriculum design and leadership roles) which contribute to personal and professional development; and
- Social: Engagement in formal and informal sport, social and leisure activities with HE peers.
We are looking for institutions interested in joining this project and helping to shape new thinking for the engagement of commuter students. As part of this we will appoint student-peer-researchers at your institution who will be trained and supported to interview students who commute to study.
If you are interested in being part of this research then please as soon as possible and we will provide you with further details.
Would be interested to know more about the project and whether we can help.
mark
Director of Academic Development
University of Bedfordshire
We would be interested in being a part of this research, if possible.
Thank you,
Becca
Students’ Union President 15/16
Bishop Grosseteste University
Would also be very interested in this project with our high proportion of commuting students and the further opportunity to work in partnership with students.
John Peters
Head of Academic Practice
Newman University
Hello all, thank you so much for the interest in our commuter students project. I will pass your details to the research team who will be able to send you some more details on the next steps for this work.
Jonathan
Hello, Just starting and students living at home project. We have minimal support from the LSE Student’s Union to help commuter students, but we have a Home Students Society.
Any contribution we could make would be great!
Aysha
Hi Aysha, thanks for getting in touch, it is great to hear about the work that you are doing. In two weeks we will be holding a workshop on commuter student engagement, unfortunately this has sold out but we do have a waiting list in case any delegates are unable to attend –
I will pass on your message to our commuter student research team who will be able to let you know more about our upcoming work in this area and the ways you can get involved.
Best wishes,
Jonathan