Cross-Cultural Content Validation of an Online Engagement Framework

Cross-Cultural Content Validation of an Online Engagement Framework

Student engagement in higher education has been internationally recognised as an indicator of learning success. Despite broad consensus about the relevance of this construct in higher education, there is still no agreement among scholars regarding its conceptualisation, measurement, and pedagogical development, especially when it comes to online learning. In recent years, Redmond et al. (2018) developed a conceptual framework of student engagement focused precisely on online higher education environments. Following Redmond et al.’s (2018) suggestion to further expand this framework by determining its statistical validity and applying it across different contexts, a joint research project was devised between University of Southern Queensland in Australia and Universidad Estatal a Distancia in Costa Rica aimed at developing a scale based on the framework. The initial phase of this project consisted in generating preliminary items for the scale and conducting a study to gather evidence of their content validity. Twenty scholars with extensive experience in online higher education (10 English speakers, 10 Spanish speakers) and 20 undergraduate students from both universities (10 English speakers, 10 Spanish speakers) participated as panellists in the study. In this paper, we explore the key findings of this first study and discuss further directions for the ongoing project.