Purpose of the study

The goal of this literature review is to provide an overview of the factors associated with student engagement in blended learning. With this overview of factors, we aim to help teachers, educational leaders, and academic developers to support and increase student engagement in these learning environments in higher education contexts.

Research question

The literature search and analysis were directed by our research question focused on how do student factors, teaching and course factors, technology factors, and social classroom factors associate with different dimensions of student engagement? In order to provide discrimination between factors and the various dimensions of student engagement, this study has both theoretical as well as scientific relevance.

Theoretical framework

Blended learning is understood as a combination of traditional face-to-face and online learning (Siemens et al., 2015). It can be an effective balance between online learning and on-campus learning. Blended learning is not only important to trigger positive learning outcomes, it is also regarded as one of the crucial ways to increase student engagement (Drysdale et al., 2013). Student engagement means students devote their energy physically and psychologically to the learning processes (Janosz, 2012). We need to understand what factors in blended learning can promote the various dimensions of student engagement in order to design blended learning that helps students succeed in their programs.

In this literature review, we distinguished five types of student engagement: behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, agentic engagement, and social engagement based on Reeve & Tseng, 2011 and Deng et al., 2020. Behavioral engagement refers to the various behaviors of a learner during learning and academic tasks (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Emotional engagement refers to positive emotions during task involvement and the absence of negative emotions (Reeve, 2013). Cognitive engagement has been defined as the amount of mental effort students invest in learning to engage with the learning material (Richardson & Newby, 2006). Agentic engagement is students’ constructive contribution to the flow of the instruction they receive, in which students intentionally and proactively try to influence their learning environment, which can facilitate their learning. Social engagement refers to teacher-student and student-student interactions (Deng et al., 2020).

This systematic literature review adopted a content analysis to do a narrative synthesis and provides an overview of different factors that influence student engagement in blended learning in higher education, distinguishing student factors, teaching and course factors, technology factors, and social classroom factors. The results show that the literature involving factors associated with social engagement is limited, and factors related to agentic engagement are not investigated in these included articles at all. Furthermore, the results indicate it is important for researchers to distinguish between the dimensions of engagement because each factor may be related to a dimension of student engagement in its own ways. 

This review used a narrative synthesis, which relies primarily on the use of words and text to summarize and explain the findings of the synthesis (Popay et al., 2006), to synthesize the available research base focusing on influences associated with student engagement in blended learning in higher education. The literature search is the first step, and various available databases, for example, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), ProQuest, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), SpringerLink, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and SAGE Journals, were included in the search. Literature was collected until May 2020, and a starting year was not defined. Next, the inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed to include relevant articles and exclude irrelevant studies. We also appraised included articles to see their quality. Lastly, this review is based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (Moher et al., 2009). Analysis of Student Engagement First, we analyzed which dimensions of student engagement were investigated in the included articles. The analysis was based on deductive content analysis. The data of engagement was subdivided according to the pre-determined dimensions of engagement: behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, agentic engagement, and social engagement. Analysis of Influences Second, we identified the various influences on student engagement in blended learning contexts. For this purpose, we used a content analysis (Patton, 2014). Based on Fredricks et al., 2004, Vonderwell & Zachariah, 2005, and Montgomerie et al., 2016, we developed a framework of four factors on student engagement: student factors, teaching, and course factors, technology factors, and social classroom environment factors. After creating the framework, we identified influences in each article and subdivided them into the developed framework's four themes. Additionally, these themes were further inductively differentiated, which means that sub-themes were constructed based on the influences identified in included articles. The process was conducted by the author and a researcher independently. A final reliability check resolved all discrepancies between two coders by reviewing the articles and discussing with two experts.

This review gives a comprehensive overview of factors related to each dimension of student engagement in blended learning. While some common findings of influences on student engagement have been reported, this review advanced the understanding of influences on student engagement in blended learning in higher education in multiple ways. First, the same factor may have different impacts on different dimensions of student engagement. Therefore, researchers should distinguish among the dimensions of engagement when studying the relationships between student engagement and the various factors. Second, articles involving factors associated with social engagement were limited, and no articles were found that studied factors related to agentic engagement. Third, the analysis showed the importance of the influence of the teaching and course factors. Fourth, student engagement tends to be determined by the interaction of different factors, and no single factor can ensure better student engagement in blended learning. In addition, to measure student engagement, future studies should use data from LMS more. Besides, negative emotions should also be used to measure emotional engagement. Last, longitudinal method and multilevel analysis should also be applied in investigating factors associated with student engagement.

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