Content area
Student engagement is one of the factors for determining the quality and retention of online education. Student engagement is also essential to student learning and success in online courses. This quantitative study used the online community and engagement scale survey to examine student engagement in three types of interactions, student-student, student-content, and student-instructor in undergraduate and graduate online courses. The MANOVA results indicated differences in engagement between graduate and undergraduate students; Wilks’ Lambda, F (3,155) = .9, p = .0008. The follow-up ANOVAs showed that graduate students were more engaged amongst themselves (F (1,157) = 16.38, p = .0001, as well as with content, F (1,157) = 9.39, p = .0001) than undergraduate students. The factorial analysis findings highlighted the contributing factors to student-instructor, student-student, and student-content interactions. Further, there was no statistically significant difference in engagement between international and domestic students in online courses. However, international students tended to engage more than domestic students. This study provides guidelines that may assist instructional designers and online instructors in developing and teaching engaging online courses.