Student engagement is understood to be an important benchmark and indicator of the quality of the student experience for higher education; yet the term engagement continues to be elusive to define and it is interpreted in different ways in the literature. This paper firstly presents a short review of the literature regarding online engagement in the higher education environment, moving beyond discipline-specific engagement. It then presents a conceptual framework which builds upon recurring themes within the literature, including students’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. The framework was developed by adopting a constant comparison method to analyse the literature, and to search for and identify current and emerging themes. The framework identifies indicators for five key elements of online engagement, and the authors propose that the framework provides a guide for researchers and academics when exploring online engagement from a conceptual, practical and research basis. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for practice, outlining how the framework might be used to reflect critically upon the effectiveness of online courses and their ability to engage students.

The growth of the central state 12 Nationalist challenges 16 2 Politics, State and Society What is the state? Defining society Discovering the nation Shifting state-society relations Nations and states Scotland and the British state Scotland in the Union, and the Union in Scotland Conclusions 3 Politics and the Scottish Constitution Introduction The nineteenth century: the era of the legal state Nineteenth-century Scotland in a European context The twentieth century: the era of the technocratic state Twentieth-century Scotland in an international context A new constitution for Scotland? 4 The Scottish Economy vi Contents Key debates The 1997 general election and the referendum Conclusions 5 PoHcy-Making in Scotland

This article attempts to move beyond assumptions that nationalism is essentially cultural and/or narrowly political, and that it is primarily past-oriented and defensive. We do this by examining evidence relating to the creative (re)construction of the nation from a contemporary economic perspective. Paying particular attention to Scotland and Wales, we show that the mobilisation of national identity within this process of (re)construction is not exclusive to those who seek greater political autonomy. National identity is also mobilised, often in a 'banal' fashion, by nonpolitical national institutions such as economic development agencies. We argue that, within the strategies and discourses of economic development, historic national characteristics are reconciled with contemporary needs and aspirations through four processes: reiteration, recapture, reinterpretation and repudiation.

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