Models for understanding student engagement in digital learning environments

Abstract

Digital learning environments are increasingly prevalent in higher education. The flexible and less constrained nature of these environments, means students often need to be more autonomous in managing their own learning. This implies that students are sufficiently selfmotivated to successfully engage in autonomous learning. The concept of "student engagement" has shown promise in assisting researchers' and educators' understanding of how students' general involvement in study, and their more specific completion of learning tasks, can lead to beneficial outcomes in digital learning environments. However, student engagement has taken on multiple, diffuse definitions in higher education creating confusion about what engagement is and how best to promote it. In this paper we build on a model of engagement from organisational psychology that offers insight into task-level engagement. Established models in the area of student motivation are integrated to bring clarity to the construct at tasklevel in digital learning environments.