Belonging is critical to first-year student success and persistence in higher education. However, differing definitions make it challenging to fully understand why belonging is significant. Foregrounding student voice, this research explored how first-year Australian university students talked about their belonging. Using Kahu and Nelson's (2018)…

Teacher-student relationships are critically important for student engagement and learning. Increasingly, children with additional behavioural, physical, communication, and learning needs are supported in the classroom by teacher aides working alongside teachers. Although the teacher aide role is often described as relational, few studies have…

Student engagement is critical to success in the first year of university, yet evidence about how and why various factors influence engagement remains relatively rare. This study addresses this gap combining an existing framework of student engagement (Kahu and Nelson, "Higher Education Research and Development," 37(1), 58-71, 2018) with…

This research examined the impact of supplementing a learning management system, Moodle, with communication tools, Discord and Teams, to support communication in blended and distance undergraduate courses in computer science, information technology, mathematics and statistics at a New Zealand university with well-established use of Moodle.…