The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a relationship between formative assessment and student engagement at Walters State Community College. Additionally, a secondary purpose examined differences in the in the dimensions of student engagement dimensions (skills engagement, emotional engagement, participation or interaction, performance) based on gender, school classification (freshman, sophomore), and age.
Two hundred thirty-nine Walters State Community College students taught with face-to-face pedagogy comprised the population for the study. The survey instruments included a 15-item formative assessment survey selected from the Walters State Community College Student Opinion of Teaching and Course (WSCCSOTC) and the Student Course Engagement Questionnaire (SCEQ) developed by Handelsman, Briggs, Sullivan, and Towler (2005) to ascertain measures of student course engagement.
The primary finding of the study was that formative assessment had a positive relationship on student engagement at Walters State Community College. The study also offered some evidence that certain teaching strategies proposed in the literature could contribute to formative assessment and increase student engagement. In the context of student engagement dimensions, there were significant differences between female study skills engagement and male performance engagements results. The results for freshman and sophomore students on the student engagement dimensions yielded no significant difference. Interestingly, 24 year old students consistently had higher or equally as high scores on all of the student engagement dimensions
