Developing indicators for measuring the agricultural sciences Students’ Engagement

Student Engagement is a phrase that was first proposed to understand and explain academic failure and wasconsidered as a basis for reforming the process of education. This study is an applied research and in termsof data collection method is a survey research. To achieve the research goal, fuzzy hierarchical analysis andfactor analysis methods were used. Research participants in the fuzzy hierarchical analysis section included20 agricultural higher education professionals who participated to extract and evaluate the relative importanceof indicators for measuring student engagement. Findings of fuzzy hierarchical analysis showed that peerlearning, Work Integrated Learning, and experiential learning with professors were of greater importance in theengagement of agricultural students. In the survey section with a statistical population including 1000 third andfourth year students of Iranian universities and colleges of agriculture, based on the Krejcie and Morgan table,278 students (128 male and 118 female) were selected as the sample size of the research using Stratified samplingwith proportional assignment. Findings of factor analysis indicate that from Students' opinions, componentssuch as combination of specialized experiences in learning, reflective and integrated learning, participatorylearning, effective teaching methods, learning strategies and Higher Order learning are the most important in thestudent engagement of students in universities and colleges of agricultural sciences, respectively.