The measurement of student online engagement of higher education: a scoping review in the international literature

Abstract

This article is a scope review whose main goal is to identify the instruments for collecting and analyzing the measurement of online engagement used in international research, aiming at the choice for scalable use and adaptation to Brazilian Higher Education. Dimensions database was searched from 2017 to 2021. There was a total of 162 obtained documents, which after the screening resulted in a sample of 10 articles. The context for using these instruments is higher education and the four most recent ones were developed during the Covid-19 pandemic period. Most articles have a quantitative approach. All use some type of self-report questionnaire to collect data, which mostly consist of questions and a 5-point Likert scale. The most repeated analysis technique in the articles is structural equation modeling. Of the ten selected questionnaires, we conclude that the one by Sun and Rueda (2012) is the one that best provides the criteria for analyzing student online engagement in the context of higher education, by bringing in its elements a configuration that can be scalable to different institutional contexts and a wide range of disciplines.

Keywords:
Online engagement; Student engagement; Higher education; Self-report