Learning Engagement in Virtual Environment

Today e-learning is blooming as a vital part of digital age education which facilitates a virtual environment for enhanced interaction & engagement between teachers and fellow learners and to engage them with resources for effective learning. Despite having significant potential, the Google classroom is still vastly underutilized especially in developing countries e.g. Bangladesh. This study is an endeavor to identify the factors responsible for poor engagement of students in Google classroom and to explore other critical barriers behind the underutilization of this virtual learning platform. From the empirical findings, this study attempts to explain and testify the effectiveness of strategies adopted in different classes for more engagement and proactive participation from the students. The primary data was acquired through a baseline survey which was carried out using a pre-defined structured questionnaire with a sample size of 350 randomly selected undergraduate students from different levels. Several case studies were also carried out along with participatory and non-participatory observations of student activities as methodology of this research. The research questions were: a) Do the peer influence improves student engagement in critical thinking? b) Do the passive role of teacher increase the