abstract
- © 2019 IEEE.The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics that make a professor more likely to succeed in achieving student engagement when moving from a face-to-face teaching environment to synchronous online instruction. This study presents a comparison of student outcomes between the traditional face-to-face model and the synchronous online model. The experimental group consisted of 118 courses with 2563 students, who received their classes online in the fall of 2017. The control group had a similar size; they received traditional face-to-face classroom instruction in the fall of 2016. The teachers were the same in the two periods. The statistical results showed differences between the two groups and allowed us to list the characteristics of the teachers who achieved student engagement in the synchronous online model. We conclude that the teachers who succeed in engaging students in the online courses are characteristically young, excellent in technology management, good with interpersonal interactions and maintain a robust social presence; or they are experienced teachers proficient in the use of technology, very well trained in didactic techniques, and who competently manage transactional distances.