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The purpose of the study was to examine the impacts of course activities on student perceptions of engagement and learning in online courses. Using eight interactive course activities as indicators of course interactivity, we conducted a latent profile analysis to cluster students into different groups. Based on students’ perceptions, we observed three distinct groups of instructional contexts: (a) courses with low student-student but high student-instructor interactions (Low S-S but High S-I Interactions; 25.3%), (b) courses that mainly utilize group discussions (Group Discussion Focused; 20.2%), and (c) courses with high student-student and high student-instructor interactions (High S-S and S-I Interactions; 54.4%). Students’ perceptions of engagement and learning outcomes varied across groups. Notably, students in the highly interactive courses (High S-S and S-I Interactions) reported the most favorable perceptions of engagement and learning outcomes, compared to students in the other two groups. Implications for instruction professionals and future research directions are discussed.
Tsai et al. (Sat,) studied this question.