I FEEL CONNECTED: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND LECTURERS’ CREDIBILITY

Communication is essential. Having the ability to communicate thoughts, ideas, and feelings is crucial in all environments. The education industry regards communication as a core business to transfer knowledge. This paper focuses on how two different groups of students at Sunway University, Malaysia, perceived Lecturers’ Credibility (LC) in a class that enhances the Students’ Engagement (SE). A group of 50 to 60 students from the Faculty of Arts (FoA) and School of Business (SoB) completed measures of LC and SE using McCroskey and Teven’s (1999) Source Credibility Questionnaire (SCQ) and Students Engagement Survey from Indicators of Positive Development Conference, Child Trends. The variables for LC comprise competence, character and caring (CCC), and the variables for SE consist of cognitive, behaviour and emotion (CBE). The study aims to determine if there are any differences in SE between students from FoA and SoB with their perceived LC. Hopefully, the study sheds some light on the research question: “Are there any differences among Faculty of Arts students and School of Business students in the relationship between lecturers’ credibility and students’ engagement?”