Student Engagement and Class Satisfaction in an Undergraduate Marketing Course: A 5-Year Longitudinal Study

This study examined the impact of student engagement on satisfaction with an undergraduate marketing research course. Student engagement consisted of three dimensions in this study, namely physical engagement, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement. Flow theory was used to examine the potential impact of the disruption of student learning flow on student engagement and student learning outcomes (i.e. student class satisfaction) using longitudinal data from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were collected over 10 semesters at an American public university. The data analysis results indicated that physical engagement was negatively associated with student class satisfaction, while emotional engagement and cognitive engagement exhibited a positive association. In addition, physical engagement had a stronger influence on student class satisfaction during the pandemic than before the pandemic, while there was no significant difference in the impact of emotional and cognitive engagement between the periods. Results imply that instructors need to engage students emotionally and intellectually in activities that do not make them work too hard.