Digital learning readiness and academic engagement: The role of learning motivation

Abstract

The rapid expansion of digitally mediated learning in higher education has heightened the need to understand how students meaningfully participate in technology enhanced environments. Although digital learning readiness and academic engagement have been widely studied, these constructs are often examined as separate areas of inquiry. Readiness research tends to emphasise measurement, preparedness, and capability, whereas engagement scholarship focuses on behavioural, emotional, and cognitive participation in learning. The theoretical mechanism explaining how learner capability becomes enacted engagement therefore remains insufficiently articulated. This conceptual paper proposes an integrated framework that positions digital learning readiness as a foundational learner resource and learning motivation as the activating mechanism that converts readiness into academic engagement. Drawing on established readiness constructs and Self Determination Theory, the model argues that competence alone does not guarantee sustained participation. Instead, motivational processes shape whether digital capability becomes meaningful behavioural, emotional, and cognitive involvement. The framework specifies both a direct relationship between readiness and engagement and an indirect relationship mediated by learning motivation, thereby adopting a partial mediation logic rather than a deterministic capability model. Recent studies during digital learning transitions support the need to examine readiness and motivation together, as student readiness for live online learning has been linked with motivation, self efficacy, and participation conditions in higher education contexts (Tang et al., 2021; Wagiran et al., 2022). By integrating previously parallel research streams into a coherent explanatory structure, this study advances theoretical understanding of student participation in digitally mediated higher education and provides a foundation for future empirical validation and institutional application.