Utilizing synchronous discussions to create an engaged classroom in online executive education

Many universities are increasing the use of online executive education which provides greater flexibility for students and instructors. While student engagement can be difficult to achieve in traditional classroom settings, the Distance Learning (DL) context inherently impedes student engagement and provides unique obstacles to the desired outcome of student engagement. Therefore, in this paper, I present a best practices approach to synchronous class discussions that can be implemented to increase student engagement in online executive education.