A Study on College Students’ Self-regulated Online Learning in the Home Study Context

Abstract

Under the circumstance of school closure due to the outbreak of COVID-19, one of the greatest challenges for the sudden transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to fully online learning lies in students’ inadequate capability in self-regulated learning (SRL). This study investigates how the first-year undergraduate students regulated their online learning in an EFL Small Private Online Course (SPOC) during the pandemic period. A revised version of Jansen et al.’s (2018) Self-regulated Online Learning Questionnaire (SOL-Q) is applied to collect information of the participants’ SRL ability. Results indicated that the participants’ overall self-regulated online learning ability was generally at an intermediate level, however there’s still room for improvement. Specifically, the participants demonstrated limited capability in respect of meta-cognitive skills in the preparatory phase and persistence. A positive correlation was found between metacognitive skills and time management. Teaching implications are provided on how to improve students’ metacognitive skills, time management and persistence in future online instructions.