Conference Agenda

Student engagement in higher education (HE) continues to be a matter of concern for universities and stakeholders as engaged students are less likely to drop out and are more inclined to engage in lifelong learning (Kuh, 2009). The institutional efforts to improve student engagement include teaching methods and depend on how teachers perceive their students (Almarghani & Mijatovic, 2017). Given that some student engagement may be invisible to the teacher (Gourlay, 2017; Padilla-Petry & Vadeboncoeur, 2020), and that students' perception of the subject and their own engagement may differ from that of the teachers’ (Zepke et al., 2014), few studies have compared teachers' views of student engagement with those of students' and little is known about an engagement that may go beyond a performativity (Macfarlane & Tomlinson, 2017b). Consequently, HE policies may be focusing on student engagement only as it is seen from the teachers or the institutions.

Mainstream views of student engagement in HE reduce it to behaviours in classrooms organised by teachers and institutions and experienced by students. However, these mainstream views are deemed insufficient for some since they lack a "democratic-critical conception of learning that is participatory and dialogic" (Zepke, 2015, p.1317). Instead, student engagement in HE should be about adults making learning choices in post-compulsory education, thus avoiding an infantilization of HE students with compulsory attendance and emotional responses such as personal reflections on professional or experiential learning (Macfarlane & Tomlinson, 2017b).

Student engagement has traditionally been associated with high-quality learning outcomes (Wimpenny & Savin-Baden, 2013) such as critical thinking (Carini et al., 2006), but some scholars are concerned with the relationship between alleged signs of student engagement (e.g., higher attendance), specific pedagogic interventions and learning gains (Macfarlane & Tomlinson, 2017a; 2017b). As an ideology that reifies the notion of participation (Gourlay, 2015), the concept of student engagement may serve to underscore notions of what is acceptable student behaviour. For instance, would engagement-as-opposition (engagement outside the norms, protesting etc.) be recognised as engagement (Macfarlane & Tomlinson, 2017b)?

Several elements of what is considered legitimate engagement "focus on activity, which is communicative, recordable, public, observable and often communal" (Gourlay, 2015, p.404). The performativity associated with student engagement may not be directly related to learning and the conflation of student satisfaction and engagement may be illusory if the former is scarcely related to learning gains (Macfarlane & Tomlinson, 2017b). Thus, equating meaningful learning to largely behavioural measures may fail to capture the quality of learning generating a performativity in which targets and performance indicators must be met, students must be perceived as active learners and what is easily observable is measured (Macfarlane & Tomlinson, 2017b).

Furthermore, some scholars highlight the invisibility or misinterpretation of certain forms of student engagement as some students may have an independent style of engagement and collaborate less with peers, while others seem to be passive (Gourlay, 2017). The invisibility of solitary forms of student engagement such as reading, writing or enquiring on the content of the subject outside the class may be ignored by teachers (Gourlay, 2017; Padilla-Petry & Vadeboncoeur, 2020) and students who prefer more solitary or independent learning may feel alienated and even vilified in classes where participation is mandatory (Tomlinson, 2017). But since what is understood as legitimate student engagement may vary according to teachers’ expectations and pedagogy (Gourlay, 2015) and reduced to task completion (Wintrup, 2017), more studies on the differences between HE students’ and teachers’ perspectives on student engagement and learning are needed to better inform HE policies on student engagement.

How students deal with academic demands is well researched in campus-based contexts. Work on self-regulated learning and on stress, appraisal and coping suggests that students actively plan, monitor and regulate cognition, behaviour and emotion in response to these demands (Zimmerman, 2008; Pintrich, 2004; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Panadero, 2017). Evidence also exists on self‑regulated learning strategies in online higher education (Broadbent & Poon, 2015). In distance education (DE), the transition into higher education is widely seen as critical for subsequent study success (Trautwein & Bosse, 2017) and is associated with multifaceted challenges such as getting used to and finding one’s way in distance learning, developing self-learning skills, balancing various commitments, and establishing and maintaining social contacts with peers, alongside limited student interaction (Brown et al., 2015; Schweighart et al., 2024; Trautwein et al., in preparation). While recent reviews synthesise interventions to strengthen self-regulated learning in first-year students (Simón‑Grábalos et al., 2025), we know less about which self-regulated coping strategies first-year DE students report assembling in response to critical transition requirements, and which institutional and sociomaterial conditions make these strategies workable.

We conceptualise self‑regulated coping as students’ purposeful cognitive, behavioural, emotional and social regulation aimed at managing perceived transition requirements, uncertainty and constraints during the early period. While much research on the transition into distance education has focused on challenges and barriers, our focus goes beyond cataloguing challenges to tracing students’ agentic, coping strategies and the conditions that enable or hinder strategy use. Whereas prior work focuses on designed interventions to improve self‑regulated learning (Simón‑Grábalos et al., 2025), we examine the strategies students themselves assemble in situ. We address two questions: (RQ1) (RQ1) Which self‑regulated coping strategies do first‑year DE students report using to manage critical transition requirements? (RQ2) Which sociomaterial and institutional conditions (e.g., platform affordances, resource visibility, staff presence, peer infrastructures) enable or constrain these strategies?

Data were collected through thirteen online focus groups at two German DE programmes (one public, one private) with 41 undergraduates (aged 19–55; most employed and/or with caring responsibilities). Transcripts were analysed inductively using qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2022). The semi‑structured guide drew on TiDE evidence on transition challenges/requirements (Schweighart et al., 2024; Trautwein et al., in preparation). Coding centred on “requirement episodes” and linked (a) the requirement/challenge described, (b) the coping strategies students reported using, and (c) enabling or constraining conditions referenced.

Preliminary analysis indicates four clusters of coping strategies. (1) Temporal structuring and workload design: pacing heuristics (‘one module per month’), micro-scheduling (‘one lesson per day’), time-blocking and exam-period prioritisation; they sequence modules strategically to sustain motivation. (2) Resource curation and self-help: systematically mine learning management system (LMS) FAQs, explainer videos and course discussion threads (e.g., in Microsoft Teams); attendance at synchronous learning sessions; personal knowledge bases; reliance on recordings when live attendance is infeasible. (3) Help-seeking and peer mobilisation: selecting responsive tutors, overcoming reluctance to ask questions, and leveraging small peer groups for explanation and motivation. (4) Emotion/load regulation and contingency management: workshops addressing overwhelm and motivation, deliberate pace adjustments, avoiding overload-inducing live events, deadline flexibility in bottlenecks, and—under acute strain—formal leave. Across clusters, students combine multiple strategies and often routinise them over time. Strategy workability appears conditional on the timely visibility of resources, prompt and personal staff responses, and accessible, low-threshold peer infrastructures.

We present preliminary findings and derive provisional implications at course/programme, staff and policy levels, outlining where institutional design may strengthen students’ capacity for self-regulated coping in digitally mediated environments.

The present study examines university teachers’ perceptions of practices facilitating student agency in course and degree programs contexts in Finnish higher education. Student agency is important for students’ learning and how they experience their learning environment (Stenalt & Lassesen 2022). There has been increased interest in the agency of higher education students in recent years (Torres Castro & Pineda-Báez 2023), but empirical research on fostering student agency in higher education is limited (see Stenalt & Lassesen, 2022). Student agency is commonly understood as students’ active participation and capacity to shape their own learning, encompassing the opportunities they have to influence their learning processes within social contexts (e.g., Bandura, 1999; Biesta & Tedder, 2007). The importance of student agency is also emphasized in international educational policy documents (e.g., OECD, 2019), thus affecting educational aspirations in European countries, including Finland.

Student agency is shaped by how individuals interact with their social and structural environments and by the resources available to them. Instead of viewing students only as rational, self-directing actors (Lee, 2024) it is important to understand that agency involves beliefs about personal efficacy, and experiences of relational and contextual resources available to them, which all contribute to students’ agentic actions (e.g., Jääskelä et al., 2023). From a social cognitive perspective, Bandura (1999) identifies beliefs about personal efficacy as central to agency, influencing people’s actions, expected outcomes, and their capacity for self‑regulation and reflection. Thus, student agency emerges through interactions between learners’ perceptions, social contexts, and the supports that enable meaningful action.

Research on student agency in higher education—particularly within teacher education—highlights the central role of social interaction, learning environments, and pedagogical practices in shaping how students experience and enact agency. Studies show that future teachers need opportunities to build their own sense of agency, as this supports their capacity to later foster pupils’ agency (e.g., Juutilainen et al., 2018). Opportunities for students to share ideas, negotiate roles, participate in discourse, and take authorial stances promote agency, whereas traditional teacher‑led practices may constrain it (e.g., Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011).

Research on higher education pedagogy shows that agency-supportive environments, involving trust, co-construction of knowledge, and student‑centred pedagogies, enhance meaningful learning (e.g., Stenalt & Lassesen,2021). While co-creation of knowledge can enhance agency, it also poses challenges: student voices may not be equally heard, and authentic participation requires inclusive and safe environments (Simecek & Freeman, 2025). Ultimately, fostering student agency demands attention to institutional cultures, curriculum, and pedagogical approaches (Graham, 2025), involving integration of real-world learning experiences for students (Nieminen et al., 2025).

Although student agency is widely recognised as a central goal in higher education, there is limited empirical research on concrete ways to foster it. More evidence is needed across different disciplines and learning contexts. This qualitative study examines university teachers’ perceptions of how agency can be supported through course design and degree programme practices. The study aims to identify both agency‑supportive and agency‑hindering practices by analysing university teachers’ reflections.