Instructor and student perceptions of online student engagement strategies

The purpose of this article is to report findings pertaining to faculty members’ perception of the importance of engagement strategies utilized in the online learning environment and to compare them with student perception data that had been previously collected using the same instrument. A validated survey instrument, the online engagement strategies questionnaire, was used to collect data from online instructors who teach in higher education. Email distribution lists of two professional associations were utilized to collect the data. A total of 161 online instructors responded. While instructors and students agreed on the importance of several engagement strategies, results also show that instructors perceive engagement strategies listed on the survey instrument as more important than do students.