The role of social media in self-regulated learning

Abstract

The challenge for faculty and academic institutions is to leverage the learning affordances of social media, particularly those that enable learners to become independent, self-regulated learners. There is evidence that social media can facilitate the creation of personal learning environments (PLE) that help learners develop and apply self-regulated learning processes such as setting appropriate personal goals, using task strategies to manage information, and engaging in self-monitoring and self-evaluation to progress to socially mediated knowledge and networked learning. The present study examines how learners (N = 87) use social media to create a PLE that supports their learning experience and whether learners apply self-regulated learning processes while creating this PLE. The study also reports on the degree to which learners' use of social media aligns with a three-level pedagogical framework for social media use and provides guidelines for the development of PLE.