J-LEE | VOLUME 2/NOMOR 01/DESEMBER/2020 15 J-LEE Journal of Law, Economics, and English http://ejournal.uhb.ac.id/index.php/J-LEE/issue/archive J-LEE THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT DURING ONLINE LEARNING Tri Pujiani English Education Department of Social Science Faculty Harapan Bangsa University Email: tripujiani@uhb.ac.id ABSTRACT Students’ engagement can be defined as how much time, commitment, and effort is devoted to the learning process. Students’ engagement is an important element in learning because it is a factor that affects academic success. During the emergency online learning due to covid-19 pandemic, some problems emerged because of the lack of learning engagement. This descriptive study was aimed to find out the problems faced by the students and the lecturers during the online learning as well as the tips to build learning engagement. The study was carried out in July 2020 to the students and the lecturers of Harapan Bangsa University. The data obtained from questionnaire and semi structured interview showed that although the implementation of online learning has been good, there were still some problems to be solved. Moreover, learning engagement was absolutely required during the online learning. It is expected that the result of this study may be useful for lecturers in designing the effective online learning and also for the students in understanding their role during the learning process. Keywords: students’ engagement, online learning, covid-19 INTRODUCTION Since the Covid-19 pandemic, people are now faced with a new era, namely the New Normal. New Normal is a new order, habit, and behavior based on adaptation to cultivate a clean and healthy life (Ministry of Health, 2020). At this time, people have to get used to new life patterns such as wearing masks, hand washing habits, social distancing, changing working hours, and online learning. The online learning system has actually existed for a long time and has been implemented by several institutions. However, when face-to-face teaching and learning activities are eliminated and all educational institutions are required to carry out online learning, it does not mean that online learning can run smoothly without any obstacles. The students and the lecturers need to adapt to this immediate switch. The students are required to be autonomous learners. In addition, the lecturers’ limitation in mastering Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is also an obstacle because it makes the teaching preparation process take longer. However, online learning is not merely about the use of ICT in learning, but also about the interaction between teachers and students in this learning process in which involves ICT (Dixson, 2015). The engagement between lecturers and students in online learning, as well as other learning methods, is an important element because it is an