Student cognitive engagement (CE) is crucial as it reflects students’ investment in academic achievement. To conceptualise different dimensions of CE, the Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive (ICAP) framework is widely adopted. While ICAP has been applied in higher education (HE), existing studies are often fragmented, context-specific, or limited to a specific learning environment. Although broader CE strategies have been reviewed, a comprehensive review of practices and methodologies used to capture CE through ICAP across diverse settings is lacking. Therefore, this study reviews 42 peer-reviewed articles using PRISMA methodology to explore current practices in capturing student CE via ICAP in HE. It highlights ICAP applications in face-to-face (36%), online (52%), and hybrid (12%) learning environments, and captures CE mainly across physical learning materials (29%), and online discussion forums (29%). Some studies employed interviews and questionnaire surveys to collect data, while others extracted data from learning management systems. Most studies manually mapped CE to ICAP (57%), which limits their scalability and generalisation. Therefore, there is a compelling need for automated approaches, such as the integration of machine learning models. This study offers valuable insights for educators and researchers on the relevance and versatility of ICAP in capturing CE across varied learning environments and contexts.