“Are you studying?”: Investigating college students’ self-regulated learning process across scheduled study events with mobile nudges

• In Event: Rethinking Learner Engagement in the Age of Intelligent Systems

Abstract

This study explores how mobile nudges influence college students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) during scheduled study sessions using a custom Study Scheduler app. With 629 college students over a 7-week course, we examined how nudges affected study activation, planning behavior, task engagement, and behavioral adaptation. Using mobile log data, experience sampling, and dynamic SEM modeling, findings reveal that nudges increased session initiation and planning, particularly for students with strong environmental regulation, conscientiousness and high self-efficacy. While task engagement declined over time, total nudge exposure and self-efficacy buffered this effect. Dynamic models revealed behavioral regularization and adaptation with both autoregressive and cross-lagged relationships. The results suggest nudges can enhance SRL processes in-situ, yet it remains limited in shaping long-term behavior adaptation.

Authors

• Zilu Jiang, Johns Hopkins University

• Meng-Ting Lo, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

• Jingwen He, University of North Texas

• Zilong Pan, Lehigh University

• Kui Xie, University of Missouri