Investigating student engagement with module activities and tasks aimed at facilitating skills development, as part of the OU’s BA (Honours) Business and Management (Q91) and assessing associations between student engagement and performance

In 2021/22, a scholarship project was conducted to investigate how the development of key, cognitive and professional skills critical to student success are embedded and scaffolded in the learning design of the BA (Honours) Business Management (Q91).

To review the set of skills that students are expected to have developed upon completing the qualification, for each core module the project: reviewed the portfolios of key, cognitive and professional skills that students are expected to have developed upon completing the BA (Honours) in Business Management (Q91); identified the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) whose achievement depends on the mastering of specific key, cognitive or professional skills; mapped how those skills are taught, developed and assessed in core modules at level 1, 2 and 3; researched the extent to which students engage with the activities and tasks aimed at developing those skills.

Project findings revealed that skills development is central to learning design and assessment across core modules of the qualification and that students are expected to devote a significant amount of time to activities aimed at facilitating the development of skills essential to achieve the qualification’s ILOs. At the same time, however, evidence of actual student engagement with those activities was shown to be limited, as students seem to have an instrumental approach to learning materials on average.

Building on these findings, further and more detailed analysis of actual student engagement with module activities and tasks aimed at facilitating skills development is now required, along with statistical research and assessment of any association between student engagement with those activities and performance.