Engaging students in and with good academic work

 It is proposed that efforts to enhance student engagement should focus attention on student engagement with good academic/professional/vocational work; hereafter, for simplicity, ‘good work’. Three main reasons are advanced for this proposition. First: engaging with good work can provide a strong and clear motivation and goal for students who want to become competent or expert in a discipline, profession or vocation. ‘Engaging with’ here carries two hugely overlapping meanings; consuming (which includes, but is not limited to, reading, observing, critiquing, exploring, discussing and analyzing) and producing. Second: any programme, any module, any suggested student learning activity, any proposed teaching method, can be tested by answering the question ‘Will it clearly and directly help the student to engage with, to consume and/or produce, good work?’ And third: in engaging with good work, the student is always clear about the point and purpose of what they are doing – to identify the qualities of good work, to critique work against these qualities, and to produce good work.