Engage me: Learners' expectancies and teachers' efforts in designing effective online classes.

Background: The COVID‐19 lockdown forced students and teachers to adjust to remote lecturers and digital learning material and design criteria for online classes became the centre of discussion. Objectives: The purpose of this empirical study was to investigate the relationship between design principles of educational online practices in higher education and students' active engagement in the online learning process. Methods: A total of 127 students participated in the study after their first semester of fully online classes resulting from the COVID‐19 lockdown. The online classes enabled real‐time communication and allowed for the creation of professional learning communities or the collaborative creation of content, for example. To evaluate the classes and to indicate perceived student learning, the study applied scales for measuring academic student engagement, as well as the four distinct factors for assessing online teaching effectiveness. Results and Conclusions: Bivariate correlational analysis suggested that the two design elements Time on Task (TT) and Active Learning (AL) are related to emotional engagement at a meaningful level thus influencing student commitment and class activities. The results further indicated that TT and AL are significant design elements in relation to perceived usefulness and students' perceived learning. Implications: The results may identify effective means to support and enhance student engagement in online settings, thus improving the quality of online teaching and learning. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic?: Student Engagement is one of the main factors that influence student achievement and student motivation to learn. It is usually associated positively with desired learning outcomes.Active learning strategies are an effective means to engage students.Research on the quality of online learning is frequently directed at student learning outcomes or the attitudes of teachers and students towards online learning. What this paper adds?: Investigations on levels of student engagement in online learning (Student‐Faculty Interaction, Time on Task, Active Learning and Cooperation Among Students) instead of levels of achievement (learning outcomes).Relationships between levels of student engagement and design elements of online classes to inform good educational practice.Design criteria for online classes that students value as useful and that positively impact student learning. Implications for practice and/or policy: Time On Task and Active Learning share a strong relationship with emotional engagement. They influence student commitment and class activities.Time On Task and Active Learning are significant design elements in relation to perceived usefulness and students' perceived learning.The weakest correlations show for Cooperation Among Students and each of the three factors of academic engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]