Student Engagement, Learning Environments and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparison between Psychology and Engineering Undergraduate Students in the UK

This study compared student learning engagement from two UK departments exploring their participation in face-to-face and synchronous online learning environments. Overall, 446 undergraduate students from Psychology (soft/non-Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) discipline) and Electrical Engineering and Electronics (EEE) (hard/STEM discipline) completed an online questionnaire over the second semester of the 2020–2021 academic year, where the teaching was mainly online. The questionnaire included validated scales regarding teaching and students’ characteristics and an open-ended question regarding the role of learning environments. There was a significant difference between the two learning environments in both departments, with most of the students believing that they were better engaged with their learning process in face-to-face environments (quantitative analysis). Additionally, the thematic analysis of student qualitative responses revealed that online student engagement was influenced by (1) Behaviour, (2) Affective, and (3) Cognitive challenges (i.e., additional workload, lack of communication and distractions in the home environment) and opportunities (i.e., the effective use of study time and online content through interactive learning environments). This study could assist academics, university policymakers, and researchers to understand student engagement alongside learning environments, reconsidering the opportunities and challenges that were gained from online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.