Fostering Students’ SRL in an Online Learning Environment

Abstract

AbstractRecent research suggests that emerging technologies such as mobile devices represent unprecedented opportunities for students to be self-regulated learners, to work independently, and leverage their ability of self-regulated learning (SRL) to acquire knowledge and therefore to take responsibility for their learning regardless of any circumstance concerning learning environments. Effective pedagogical approaches such as select, organize, associate, and regulate (SOAR) is mainly developed to be an efficient instructional method for fostering students’ SRL skills. This study examined and compared the effectiveness of three mobile learning strategies: Mobile SOAR (M-SOAR), mobile SOAR with paper (M-SOAR-P), and mobile without SOAR (M-W-SOAR) to enhance students’ SRL skills, promote motivation, and improve learning performance of a science topic in an online learning environment. This study was carried out in Khartoum city, Sudan. Three classes of Sudanese higher school students participated in the study. The students were assigned to the M-SOAR approach (experimental group A, n = 34), M-SOAR-P (experimental group B, n = 32), and M-W-SOAR (control group, n = 33) as three learning methods. The online self-regulated learning questionnaire (OSLQ) and elements of attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (ARCS) motivation questionnaire as well as the performance test were accomplished. The findings yielded that SRL skills and motivation of experimental group A were more positive compared to the experimental group B and the control group. The performance test computed by SPSS yielded that there was a statistically significant difference between three groups, in favor of the experimental group A. The study recommends further research into the effectiveness of a pedagogical SOAR approach on fostering students’ SRL in online learning environments.KeywordsOnline learning environmentSOAR learning approachMobile learningSelf-regulated learning (SRL)