Htqe.2025.07

https://doi.org/10.22364/htqe.2025.07 | 100-108 | PDF

Student Participation Methods to Improve Engagement and Understanding of the Material: Pre-Research

Poļina Štolca¹
¹Riga Business School, Latvia

Abstract
In today’s world students of all levels (bachelors, masters, business education students) have decreased level of concentration and lectures nowadays have to be more engaging and interactive for students (Marquez et al., 2023). The article is based on research results whether methods that are used by academia at the moment are efficient not only as engaging activity but also add to understanding of the material. Research aims to understand which student participation methods are the most popular among lecturers and business instructors, as well as to identify main challenges in implementing new methods. In the context of this research, participation methods are understood as methods of student involvement during the lectures, which are aimed at increasing student concentration, involvement in the learning process and positively influencing learning outcomes.

For the purpose of this research author has conducted a survey of 56 lecturers (academic staff) and business instructors from various Latvian higher education institutions, thus method of the research is collection and analysis of quantitative data.

Results of the survey have shown that majority (but not all) top participation methods used coincide both in terms of being most efficient for engagement and also understanding of the material. Through the research some hypotheses were tested and approved. For example, research hypothesis “Instructors with more experience (hence, tenure) are using less participation methods then their younger counterparts” has been confirmed as survey data showed that instructors with more than 25 years of experience use the smallest amount of participation methods.

Survey material provides additional field for research. As an example, participation method “real case studies” that are ranked quite high in terms of both efficiencies, are not ranked high in terms of frequency of use. Hypothesis to be tested in the future research is that it takes a lot of time to prepare and requires to have access to qualitative resources.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, ease of understanding the material, efficiency of learning, participation methods, student engagement

In: Human, Technologies and Quality of Education, 2025. Proceedings of Scientific Papers = Cilvēks, tehnoloģijas un izglītības kvalitāte, 2025. Rakstu krājums.  Ed. L. Daniela. Riga: University of Latvia, 2025. 698 p.
ISBN 978-9934-36-461-7 
https://doi.org/10.22364/htqe.2025