According to the US Department of Education, about 20% of post-secondary undergraduate students were taking at least one distance education course in 2008 (Radford & Weko, 2011).  By the fall of 2018, the percentage of undergraduate students enrolled in online courses had increased to 35% (US Department of Education, 2018). Yet, as the trend toward distance education enrollment increases, academic leaders remain skeptical of its efficacy. According to a study conducted through the Online Learning Consortium, only 29.1% of academic leaders reported that their faculty accepted the “value and legitimacy of online education” (Online Learning Consortium, 2016). There is a need for more evidence that online education results in adequate student learning outcomes. In addition, more evidence is needed to demonstrate which methods are effective in engaging students in the online realm. This study investigates factors of online engagement and how they may lead to improved learning outcomes for online students. This is accomplished through the examination of an online course engagement rubric implementing an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis. The variables in the rubric demonstrate ways in which online course instructors can encourage engagement and improve student performance outcomes in online pedagogies.