Engaging mature-aged learners: evaluating the engagement of students in the open access Open Foundation enabling program

This paper documents a research project on student engagement that was conducted in the Open Foundation enabling program offered by the English Language and Foundation Studies Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia. While most of the national and institutional studies on student engagement in Australia completed to date have focused on undergraduate students, this project adds to the small but growing number of studies on student engagement in open-access enabling programs. Results indicate that factors beyond the control of the university, such as paid employment, First-in-Family status, and time pressure may have the most significant impact upon engagement in learning of students from equity groups typically underrepresented in tertiary education.