The purpose of my qualitative study was to gain a deeper understanding of how United States military veterans perceive the influence of military culture on their engagement in a synchronous virtual higher education learning environment. In this study I analyzed how the military veteran students perceived engagement in the synchronous virtual classroom on three dimensions: behavioral, emotional, and cognitive, considering four contextual factors of engagement: classroom structure, faculty/staff relationships, peer interactions, and classroom tasks. I conducted interviews and observations using a phenomenological approach to study sixteen military veterans who were enrolled in a virtual Master's Degree Program in an institution of higher education. Through thematic analysis I found that the military veteran students perceived their military experience to influence their perception of all four of the contextual factors of engagement that were evaluated in this study resulting in the following identified themes. The military veterans expected to be in a virtual classroom: where there was order to what was happening and leadership being displayed by the person in charge, where they would engage in a professional discussion with their faculty, where they engaged with their peers as a part of a team, and they entered the virtual classroom committed to completing classroom tasks. Further findings in my study indicate that the military veteran students perceived each of the four contextual factors of engagement that were evaluated in this study to influence how they perceived their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement in a synchronous virtual classroom.