Journal of Global Research in Education and Social Science

Student engagement is an increasingly significant concern in higher education as learning management systems (LMSs) generate and organise extensive data on students' learning activities and interactions. However, LMS analytics do not represent all dimensions of student engagement equally, and limited comparative evidence exists regarding how major LMS platforms publicly document engagement-related indicators. This study addresses this gap through a comparative documentary content analysis of learning analytics in Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard Learn, and D2L Brightspace. Utilising the Student Engagement in Digital Learning (SEDL) Framework, the analysis classifies documented analytics indicators across four engagement dimensions: behavioural, cognitive, emotional, and social. The study examines publicly accessible official LMS documentation, including analytics documentation, reporting and dashboard materials, administrator and instructor documentation, and official developer or API documentation that explicitly identifies learner- or learning-related measures. A standardised search protocol, inclusion and exclusion criteria, unit of analysis, and coding procedure yielded a corpus of 101 distinct student engagement indicators. The findings demonstrate that these indicators are unevenly distributed across platforms and engagement dimensions. Behavioural indicators account for 44 indicators (43.6%), social indicators for 35 (34.7%), and cognitive indicators for 22 (21.8%), while no explicit native emotional engagement indicators were identified. Moodle presents the broadest documented measurement profile, with indicators spanning behavioural, cognitive, and social engagement, whereas Canvas, Blackboard Learn, and D2L Brightspace are more strongly concentrated on behavioural and social indicators. In total, 78.2% of the documented indicators represent behavioural or social engagement, suggesting a hierarchy of measurement visibility in which engagement that produces observable digital traces is more readily represented within native LMS analytics than cognitive or emotional engagement. These findings indicate that LMS analytics do not merely measure a pre-existing construct of student engagement; rather, they shape which aspects of engagement become visible and measurable through digital data. As the analysis relies exclusively on publicly accessible official documentation, the findings reflect documented measurement visibility and may not capture proprietary, configured, or otherwise undocumented capabilities. This study contributes to research on learning analytics and student engagement by demonstrating that comparative analysis of LMS documentation can reveal differences in how contemporary learning management systems operationalise and render student engagement measurable.