An Exploration of Learning Environmental Factors Affecting Student Cognitive Engagement: Implications for Instructional Design Research

As it was argued that students' cognitive engagement can be, at least in part, modified by individual or learning environmental factors, prior studies have attempted to identify the factors explaining the variability of students' cognitive engagement. This literature review has shown that students' cognitive engagement can be altered by various elements in the learning environment design such as factors related students' perceptions of teaching quality, characteristics of tasks and learning activities, teachers' behaviors during instruction, classroom goal structures, the integration of student oriented learning, action learning, problem-based learning, and constructivist learning, and academic disciplines. Based on the review, this study suggests that more studies are required to focus on understandings how the integration of instructional design principles into courses and the levels of student cognitive engagement in these courses are related. Also, an investigation of direct and indirect effect of learning environments taking into account students' personal factors would provide a more accurate picture of the relationship between learning environmental factors and students' cognitive engagement.