<p>Collaborative problem-solving is a critical 21st-century skill, yet how scaffolding strategies (idea-oriented cognitive stimulation or task-oriented procedural support) shape student engagement across diverse online collaborative environments is insufficiently understood. This lack of understanding makes it challenging to design productive strategies to enhance student learning and collaboration. To address this gap, a 2 × 2 factorial design was used with the factors of online collaborative environment (virtual reality (VR) vs. web-conferencing (WC)) and scaffolding (idea-oriented scaffolding (IS) vs. task-oriented scaffolding (TS)). A multi-method approach was used to examine the effects of online collaborative environments and scaffoldings on student engagement in collaborative problem-solving process. Research revealed that IS enhanced behavioral and social engagement in WC and adjusted cognitive and emotional engagement in VR. Conversely, TS supported behavioral and social engagement in VR and fostered behavioral and social engagement in WC. Additionally, TS promoted more diverse interactions across emotional, cognitive, and social dimensions in different online collaborative environments compared to IS. Based on the results, this research proposed three pedagogical implications for tailoring scaffolding strategies to specific online collaborative environments and three analytical implications to enhance the understanding of student engagement in collaboration.</p>