Self-Regulation of Undergraduate Students in Digital and Nondigital Learning Formats

• In Event: Differential Learning Formats for Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

The ongoing and especially due to COVID-19 promoted trend towards a more frequent usage of digital learning formats has led to a variety of challenges that the educational sector has had to face in the course of this digital evolution. In order to equip learners with the required skills to reflectively and proficiently use digital media, self-regulation and critical media literacy have become profound competencies that need to be acquired in student and teacher education (Lynch & Dembo, 2004). The involved parties have been willing to take necessary actions to improve on the technical and resource-related conditions in order to pave the way to a digital learning environment.
Within this development, blended learning has become a promising digital learning and teaching format and been used extensively in schools and universities.
Considering the basic aim of teacher education to train and extend the students’ self-regulation (Boekaerts, 2002) the impact of digital learning formats in this context appears to be of high relevance, especially since so far, only little attention has been paid in educational research to the connection between pre-service teachers’ self-regulation in online and blended learning formats (Eggers, Oostdam, Voogt, 2021).
The quasi-experimental pre-post-design study conducted in the summer term of 2022 aims to discover the relation between the enhancement of the students’ self-regulation and blended learning formats compared to traditional non-digital formats at university level with the goal of improving digital teacher education.
The overall question we address asks if either one of these formats enhances self-regulated learning in students to a higher extent. We analyzed four teacher education courses with all parameters held exactly equal except for the learning formats (digital versus traditional non-digital formats).
We drew data from N = 60 students, of which 76.70 % were female and the average age was M = 21.08 (SD = 2.59). We assessed self-regulation strategies with the following common strategies: cognitive strategies (measured with four subscales), meta-cognitive strategies (measured with three subscales), management strategies internal resources (motivational strategies, measured with three subscales) and management strategies external resource (measured with three subscales) using validated measures (Klingsieck, 2018).
All scales showed acceptable to good reliabilities at the first and second measurement point. The first analysis indicated that only few and small significant differences could be observed over time for metacognitive strategies (F = 2.06; p = .08; η^2= .13) and management strategies – internal resources (F = 2.73; p = .03; η^2= .36). No effect could be found comparing digital learning formats and traditional learning formats. These first results from this ongoing study are in line with existing research proposing that self-regulated learning can only be shaped through systematic and specified teaching of strategies (Perels, Dignath, & Schmitz, 2009). Furthermore, differential learning formats (digital versus non-digital) seem to be of equal importance for students in regard of self-regulated learning.
The results advance our knowledge in the area of teacher education training and its impact on students’ self-regulated learning. Implications for educational practice as well as for further research will be discussed.

Authors

• Cornelia Savelsberg, Otto Friedrich University Bamberg
  Presenting Author

• Miriam Marleen Gebauer, University of Bamberg
  Non-Presenting Author