Testing the relationship between out-of-class student engagement and student learning outcomes: the case of business students in Vietnam

Abstract

The topic of student engagement has emerged by the end of the last century and has become an interesting research topic for its robust correlation with a large number of desirable and positive educational outcomes. While in-class student engagement has been largely studied, out-of-class student engagement seems to receive less attention. This study closes the gap in the literature by presenting evidence on the relationship between out-of-class engagement and student learning outcomes using two different datasets of 492 and 491 business students in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. The structural equation modeling analyses using SmartPLS show significant effects of cognitive and agentic engagement on student learning outcomes. In addition, the out-of-class agentic engagement is confirmed to be a separate and distinct subcomponent of student engagement.

Keywords

• agentic engagement
• higher education
• out-of-class engagement
• student engagement
• student learning outcomes