“Learner engagement” in higher educ ation is a challenging goal, even more so as we consider designing for, and supp orting, lifelong learners online. Learning organizations, from traditional to cybersystems, are tempted to look for universal plans and strategies that promise specific and guaranteed outcomes for students. While there are some universal strategies worth considering that support online learner engagement, we must also familiarize our selves with diverse sociocultural contexts of lifelong learning and about the effect of “engagement” as an explicit conceptual framework for developing online learning environments. As we work to further devel op online learner engagement, we must also consider the impact of interactions between and among instructional designers, subject matter experts, instructors, learners, the broader community, and the learning institution. These interactions in culturally -based, dynamic communities of learning and practice shift instructional design away from the purely predictable towards engaged learning. In this discussion paper, originally pre sented as a conference paper for the e-Lea rning Asia Conference 2009, we contrast institutional and sociocultural (global) responses to lifelong learning in the online environment, share Canadian approaches to engaged learning and instructional design, and reflect upon key questions about the development of engaged learning opport unities for online learners.