Distance learning manifested an increasing growth in the field of higher education. Although it may not be exactly comparable to a residential face-to-face encounter, considering the engagement of the students in learning within a virtual context is still significant. Thus, this action research was conducted to sustain the level of virtual engagement among undergraduate teacher education students specializing in Physical Education when interactive buzz breaks are introduced in their online synchronous sessions. This study utilized a mixed-method collaborative action research approach. The participants included 48 second-year Bachelor of Physical Education (BPEd) students enrolled in the course, “Drug Education, Consumer Health, and Nutrition”, from a teacher education institution (TEI) in Central Luzon, Philippines during the second semester of the academic year 2021-2022. Multiple sources of data were collected and analyzed which included teacher’s observation notes, Student Engagement Survey Questionnaire, and reflective journals. Five (5) interactive buzz break activities were implemented using the “Wordwall” as an intervention within twelve synchronous sessions. The survey questionnaire was administered before (pre-assessment) and after (post-assessment) the intervention to describe the students’ level of virtual engagement. Results of the quantitative phase revealed that there is a high level of students’ behavioral, cognitive, and emotional virtual engagement before and after the strategy. The qualitative phase further promoted these results to reveal the remarkable experiences encountered by students during the intervention implementation that contributed to sustaining their virtual engagement. The derived results and findings posit that administering various interactive buzz break activities with the utilization of various educational platforms synchronously and asynchronously may sustain and further improve students’ virtual engagement.

The presence of various quality assurance measures was evidenced in the mainstream of higher education across the world and is a well-accepted normative standard of excellence even in the Philippines. However, there is a need to examine programs that strongly manifest students’ engagement in the educational system. Hence, this study was sought to facilitate the conduct of an internal quality assessment of the Bachelor of Physical Education program from a teacher education institution in a state university in Pampanga, Philippines grounded on the Engagement Theory of Program Quality (ETPQ) (Haworth & Conrad, 1997). A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design (follow-up variant explanatory model) was used to examine the importance, concreteness, and effectiveness of the 16 attributes of the ETPQ model by the students and faculty members of the program. Results of the quantitative strand revealed that the ETPQ attributes are generally perceived to be extremely important, highly evident, and highly to extremely effective, and yielded no significant differences between the two groups. Moreover, linear regression (forward selection method) revealed ten (10) attributes of the ETPQ in terms of concreteness to be significant predictors of effectiveness. Additionally, the qualitative strand further explored these attributes to reveal the best practices in the program. Congruence between the respondents’ assessment and their narrative experiences was also confirmed. The inputs derived may pave the way for the institutionalization of quality assurance mechanisms that put into premium the strong engagement of the students complementary with other stakeholders.