Engaging the first-year students during the pandemic -an exploratory study using a mixed method approach

Academic and social engagements are particularly important during the transition into tertiary education and are critical factors in student retention. These engagements need to form the core of students’ learning environment. Autonomy-supportive learning environments are ideal for engaging students academically and socially because they address students’ needs for competence and relatedness by nurturing their interests, and allowing them to feel involved, as opposed to controlling environments. Autonomy-supportive environments are also important in developing students for their future professions in terms of promoting their self-regulation.

The prevailing pandemic-driven academic guidelines which limit in-person interaction placed a challenge in designing an autonomy supportive learning environment at a time it is much needed. To our knowledge, there is currently no measure to assess whether the learning environment at a module level has been sufficiently autonomy supportive.

Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the extent that students have experienced the learning environment to be autonomy supportive in a first-year module.