To promote learners' effective engagement in e-Learning course, this study designed and implemented an e-Learning course named Novice Teachers' Educational Technology Training Course for 279 teaching novices in a self-directed e-Learning environment. As students were engaged in the tasks, we monitored their engagement and conducted an evaluation on a micro-video that the students created by the two course designers. The study found that: 1) Process-oriented assessment which are behavioral engagements in self-directed e-Learning course can promote learners to finish the learning activity and get high scores. 2) High-level behavioral engagement does not equate to high-level cognitive engagement while learners' cognitive engagement is more important than behavioral engagement. 3) There exists differences between high-level and low-level learning achievement in the cognitive engagement of learning activities. High-level achievement learners are more actively participating in learning activities, such as reflection, doing, discussion and publishing works. Therefore, for course designers, they should design more learning activities which go from absorption to participation and to creation.