Assessing student engagement by such measures as attendance is an increasingly common focus for universities internationally, where the opportunity to gain a high level, cross-cohort understanding of student physical presence is valuable to understand effective practices. Digital innovations have changed the way in which attendance is recorded, as alternatives to pen and paper registers are now possible and often record student attendance data centrally, informing ‘student dashboards’, which compile multiple data sources including VLE engagement, campus access, and class attendance. Recording student attendance in the UK is also imperative for international students, as universities are bound by national policy to record, monitor, and report on students’ attendance as per their visa status in the UK. Beyond international students, attendance recording also offers a valuable data source to inform student support strategies, such as by Student Retention Teams and Personal Tutors. This enables targeted support packages to be created and delivered where necessary to students who may be in need.
In recent years, universities across the globe have reported decreases in student attendance, which has caused great concern amongst academics and university managers. Traditional in-person higher education teaching is receiving much lower levels of attendance than ever before. The need to be present on campus, in class or in the library, has historically been the core of higher education learning, however, shifts in these expectations have undeniably occurred and across my blogs with Simac, I have explored these patterns of engagement and best practice alongside wider societal considerations. The causes of these changes in student behaviour are numerous, with trends in research highlighted below (Lowe at al. 2025):
1. Covid-19 exposing an entire generation of learners, workers, and customers to hybrid and home engagement models (Resch et al. 2023; Fitzgerald et al. 2022; Jackson and Blake, 2022).
2. Cost of Living / being a student leading towards students choosing paid work over attendance at university, combined often with the increasing number of students not having the funds to commute to campus (Russel Group Students’ Unions, 2023; Office for Students, 2023; Johnson, 2023).
3. Lecture recording and online library resources creating options for engagement with taught classes and resources from home, with an ability at most universities to catch up, learn and be assessed remotely (Voelkel et al. 2025; Nordman et al. 2022).
4. Poor teaching, curriculum planning and assessment which leads to disengagement, such as ‘reading from the slides’ teaching, assessments not requiring attendance, clashes in timetable causing engagement competition, and curriculum not relevant to assessment or career (Elkington et al. 2026; Dickinson, 2023).
5. Generative AI Large Language Models and Bots giving students the ability to engage with information in a very different way and perhaps even fostering the belief that knowledge can be accessed, summarised and produced through Generative AI / Large Language Models, including any knowledge artefacts for university assessments and future work (Illingworth and Forsyth, 2026).
The Divide in the Road Approaching
From my discussions with colleagues at universities across the sector, there is an increasing divide beginning to form amongst many providers. The considerations for remote learning in the university are similar to those surrounding remote working, where such digital flexibility offers accessibility and inclusion, but equally in consideration are the tensions emerging relating to engagement and community. As workplaces wrestle with their long term plans for the place of work (literally and figuratively speaking) post COVID-19, already employers are beginning to plan ahead and reset expectations. In my experience, both in higher education and other professions, this tends to fall into two camps. One camp is those workplaces with a high emphasis on in-person work (espousing the need for community building and in-person teamwork), The other places high emphasis on online work (making claims for greater flexibility for the worker). In my blog last year, I discussed the impact of Covid-19 on student engagement and highlighted how as individuals in society, we now know our preferences – we hear people saying they prefer one, the other, or a mix of both in various combinations - and perhaps universities will begin to follow suit. Thinking more deeply about this, I am beginning to predict a split in higher education in the years ahead as we have seen with the workplace more broadly. I feel there will be two dominant pathways for study and assessment, those being between High Quality Higher Education Online (from home), and High Quality Higher Education in Person.
High Quality Higher Education Online (from Home)
Of course, higher education institutions offering high quality distance learning have existed for a long time, such as The Open University, founded in 1969. This now operates through a range of excellent and well-designed online learning experiences, many of which provided a template for the sector at large through the difficult transition to online learning during the pandemic. However, this approach to online and distance education has become increasingly popular at a much wider range of providers in recent years. From short courses on leadership - often advertised on our LinkedIn feeds - offering us the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills flexibly at our own pace, or increasingly whole online degrees are being offered by distance at providers who never before offered this mode of study. Online learning offers greater levels of flexibility in pacing and content choices, it enables students the ability to work alongside their studies in times that suit them personally and engage with materials whenever and however suits their needs. Notably, the University of Manchester announced in late 2025 that in 10 years, half of their students will be online only, and institutions such as Arden University have seen large student number increases through offering blended learning with several UK sites for key learning milestones. Matching these institutional ambitions, there is a growing student preference and need for such opportunities, with busy, financially stretched, less geographically mobile students seeking such providers of higher education - the online is a market is growing substantially. As Artificial Intelligence software develops alongside the potential of Agentic AI, we are not far from the 2022 Advance HE report that predicted a possible higher education experience of the future seeing students woken up by an Agentic Avatar on their screen asking them, ‘what would you like to learn today’. High quality at home higher education does not just mean recordings, it could mean highly engaging and produced resources, flexible support options, and, as some blended programmes are providing, enhancements to tuition with in-person contact time at key milestones.
High Quality Higher Education In-Person
Running parallel to these developments and conversations, I also meet colleagues who are increasingly looking toward incentivising and/or putting policies in place to increase student attendance in person. These conversations often circle around the notion of community development, relationship building, practical applications of knowledge in real-time discussions, easier forms of dialogue (no “raise hands” or “you’re on mute!”), and opportunities for serendipitous intellectual exchanges in the hallways or over lunch. However, many of these benefits are often intangible and tricky to bottle up, making them difficult to guarantee. As such, the present situation is that where in person is offered, many students are choosing not to attend and to playback online. To try to encourage attendance in person, many universities are exploring authentic assessment approaches that engage specifically with careers, redesigning sessions towards more engaging teaching – flipping the learning so the didactic content is online, and exploring more complementary timetable patterns to working life. The sector is also again considering making attendance part of the assessment, and/or weekly assessment activities in class. This issue around attendance is considered quite differently beyond the UK, as in many public European universities, attendance is expected and there is often less financial pressure or demands for retention by regulators, so if students do not attend, they are left to stand on their own feet for assessments and/or can be excluded from study without repercussion. In Australia, a focus on in-person assessment is being seen as critical to overcome the issues of Generative AI falsifying assessment. With all this in mind, I do wonder how far away we are from a university making a stand that their approach is in-person only, for the reasons outline above but with greater dedications being made to ensuring that learning is designed inclusively both in terms of in-class participation and assessment options.
Still trying to do both
Although most UK universities would argue that they provide an in-person focused education, there is a tension in that there is still an equal opportunity to access knowledge, learning and assessment online, and many students are increasingly seeing the in-person education as optional. This begs the ultimate question of whether we as individuals, or whether students, or at an institutional level think this is a problem? I think different people will give very different answers to that question and this is where I am starting to see the divide form.
I am curious to ask readers the above question and then invite you to consider your education context and which of the above labels you see your context moving towards (whether consciously or otherwise). Engaging people during a time of prioritising speed, convenience and cost, will always lead those engaging to take the simplest route. This may not often be the best for learning or meeting the needs of what we are setting out to do in facilitating that learning. So, whichever route providers ultimately choose to take - if we wish to prioritise high quality in person or high quality online - it needs to be clear for our students, our staff, and our programmes of study from design and delivery.
Tom Lowe has researched and innovated in student engagement across diverse settings for over ten years, in areas such as student voice, retention, employability and student-staff partnership. Tom works at the University of Westminster as Assistant Head of School (Student Experience) in Finance and Accounting where he leads on student experience, outcomes and belonging. Tom is also the Chair of RAISE, a network for all stakeholders in higher education for researching, innovating and sharing best practice in student engagement. Prior to Westminster, Tom was a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth, and previously held leadership positions for engagement and employability at the University of Winchester. Tom has published two books on student engagement with Routledge; ‘A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice’ in 2020 and ‘Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education: Reflection, Critique and Challenge’ in 2023, and has supported over 40 institutions in consultancy and advisory roles internationally
References
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