One of the most important factors affecting student ''s college life experience and satisfaction is class. College provide educational experiences reflecting the purpose of education and their own context through class to students. In order to improve the quality of the class, students should actively participate and engage in class process. Specially college students are expected to voluntarily engage in the overall process of learning. However, especially college students of Korea seems to be passively involved in the learning process. So it is necessary to examining college students’ engagement in the context of Korea.
Therefore, this study investigated the structural relationship among variables influencing the class engagement of college students. Also, in order to improve the quality of college education, we want to find out whether there is a difference in the structural relationship that affects the class engagement of college students by gender, major series, and subject area. The results of this study are expected to provide basic data that can broaden the understanding of the students to the instructors who want to design good classes in the college and provide implications for building the teaching-learning environment for the quality of education at the university level .
The research problems are as follows. First, What is the structural relationship between the professor-student relationship, academic self-efficacy, task value, and class engagement that college students perceive? Second, Are there differences in the structural relationships among the variables affecting the class engagement by subject area, major, sex?
The sample of the study was conducted through a self-reporting questionnaire with students attending national C university in Daejeon. The survey was sent to approximately 841 students. After removing 110 incomplete responses, 731 cases were finally analyzed for this research. This study used a structural equation modeling (SEM). Besides, we were evaluated the fit of the model adopted the Satorra?Bentler (SB) scaled chi-square for robust maximum likelihood (ML) estimation to handle the non-normality of data, RMSEA, NNFI, TLI, CFI. Also the bootstrapping method was used to test the mediation effect. In addition, multiple group analysis was conducted to examine whether there were difference in the structural relations of the variables affecting class engagement by the group.
Major research results and suggestions based on research questions are summarized as follows.
Professor-student relationship directly impact on academic self-efficacy and task value. Academic self-efficacy and task value have a direct effect on the class engagement. Professor-student relationships have an indirect effect on class engagement through academic self-efficacy and task value. There are differences by gender, but there is no difference by the subject area and the major field.
Therefore, the professor is recommend to have interest should be interested in forming a positive professor-student relationship. Moreover, university authority pay more attention to build policies for improving the professor-student relationship'' support policies for improving the professor-student relationship and provide diverse learning experiences to improve academic self-efficacy. In addition, it is necessary to provide support such as advance guidance and structuring the curriculum to help students recognize the value of the curriculum.