Supporting regulatory processes by prompting and visualising monitoring judgments

Abstract

Computer-based learning environments offer various opportunities to learn self- regulated as well as to support learners in doing so. For instance, they may provide various possibilities for students to purposefully interact with the system and control their learning processes in their own time. Metacognitive theories on self-regulated learning assume that learners need to utilise their own monitoring to control their learning processes. By carefully designing learning environments, we may guide these processes without interfering with self- regulation, but rather by building on individual regulatory skills. In the current study, we investigate the effects of two support components that potentially can facilitate learners’ usage of their metacognitive skills: (a) explicitly asking learners to provide subjective validity ratings in order to stimulate metacognitive monitoring (prompting) and (b) feeding back these individual monitoring judgments at strategic points within the learning process in order to foster their usage for effectively controlling the learning process (visualisation). First results indicate that prompting and additionally visualising subjective validity ratings supports students in regulating their learning and resolving uncertainties, but it had no effect on the objective quality of their control decisions or domain specific learning outcome. One possible explanation might be the students’ lack of ability to accurately monitor their learning. Continuing analyses are in progress to disentangle the relations between monitoring judgments, control behaviour, performance and monitoring accuracy. Further research should build on this study and use the learners’ individual potentials to implicitly guide learning processes, but researchers and practitioners should be aware that a lack of self-regulatory skills might also produce the need for more explicit interventions.