Is student engagement the ‘magic wand’ for the Marketing Curriculum

Research suggests that engaging students effectively can improve the outcomes that they achieve. Indeed the Annual Results report of the US National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, 2013 p1) suggests “Authentic, extensive student engagement is essential for both quality and the scale required for widespread, affordable attainment”. There is however less agreement as to the best strategy to achieve student engagement.Student engagement has been defined as “the time and effort students devote to activities that are empirically linked to desired outcomes of college and what institutions do to induce students to participate in these activities” Kuh (2009, p. 683). While higher education (HE) providers are advised to ‘take deliberate steps to engage all students, individually and collectively as partners in the assurance and enhancement of their educational experience,’by the Quality Assurance Authority (QAA, 2013 p3). Reviewing the extant literature Trowler & Trowler (2010, p4) observed that there ‘are a diversity of understandings of the term “student engagement”’and identified three dimensions of student engagement:-in individual learning, in structure and process, and in identity.