As online education expands how do professors create the sense of community and engagement that students crave? This paper will argue that the concept of a Negotiated Syllabus -in which students take responsibility for choosing content in the class- provides a framework to promote student engagement in online coursework. This paper describes how to have the students serve as co-creators for the final course content. Other carefully designed assignments and tasks -such as peer review of student work and a carefully designed discussion board- can involve students deeply in their classes. Based on a careful review of the literature on active learning, as well as extensive records from classes, this paper suggests that student engagement is not determined primarily by the format (face to face or online) of the class, but rather the class structure.