What are university students grateful for to their lecturers? Lessons of an institutional gratitude practice.

Abstract

A paradigm shift can be observed in higher education institutions worldwide, including Hungary: besides the frontal, instructor-mediated delivery of learning materials, there is increasing emphasis on the application of student- or learning-centred methods, the improvement of the learning atmosphere, and the instructor-student relationship. These changes affect the whole ecosystem: higher student satisfaction can enhance the reputation of educational institutions and improve their ranking and attractiveness. Motivation generated higher student satisfaction stimulates students’ personal development and increases their success both in their studies and in the labour market. Additionally, the institutional infrastructure and administrative support, the interactions with the teaching staff play a key role in achieving student well-being. There is no consensus on a definition of teaching excellence, but besides analysing students’ expectations of teachers, the recognition of their gratitude can also highlight some important factors. Students’ gratitude captures the elements of the teaching work that are particularly valuable to students and points to the teaching practices and behaviours that students want to reinforce in their teachers. In our paper, we searched for foci and patterns in student gratitude messages collected in the context of the Thank-a-Teacher (TAT) programme at the Budapest Business University and investigated their occurrence and combinations. University students expressed gratitude primarily for the teaching qualities that supported their learning, secondarily for the human qualities, and highlighted the positive formative impact on their professional and personal lives in the long term, as well as the impressive expertise of their professors.