For decades, self-report instruments -- which rely heavily on students' perceptions and beliefs -- have been the dominant way of measuring motivation and strategy use. Event-based measures based on online trace data arguably has the potential to remove analytical restrictions of self-report measures. The purpose of this study is therefore to…

The goal of this paper is to compare the motivations and learning strategies of online and face-to-face students, utilizing the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich et al., 1993). Prior research (Crede & Phillips, 2011) suggests that motivation variables play a larger role in predicting student success in online courses…

Based on the achievement goal theory, this experimental study explored the influence of predictive and descriptive learning analytics dashboards on graduate students' motivation and statistics anxiety in an online graduate-level statistics course. Participants were randomly assigned into one of three groups: (1) predictive dashboard; (2)…

Student enrollment in undergraduate online education continues in an increasing trend toward the creation of new virtual degree programs. Academia and university faculty have observed comparable learning outcomes in both traditional and online classrooms, but minimal research exists discussing student perspectives of science-based coursework in…

The aim of this study is to investigate whether an interactive self-regulation scaffolding increases levels of online learners' self-regulated learning skills, course participation, and learning performance. The intervention utilizes a dialog approach with an intelligent conversational agent to scaffold learners' self-regulated learning. Fifty-six…

Both quizzes and reflections have been found to benefit student learning, but have been typically compared to passive or superficial controls. The purpose of this quasi-experiment is to test the relative effectiveness of brief quizzes followed by reflections compared to longer quizzes. Participants (N = 218) were introductory psychology students…

Although a number of claims have been made describing massive open online courses (MOOCs) as a disruptive innovation in education, these claims have not yet been proven through research. Instead, MOOCs should perhaps be considered as an integrative model for higher education systems, but to do so will require recognition of credentials. Initial…

This article investigates the effects of teaching about metacognition in a sociological theory course. I created a series of teaching interventions to introduce students to the science of learning, including an interactive lecture on metacognition, a discussion that models metacognitive strategies, and activities for students to practice…

We investigated how high-performers and low-performers differ with regard to motivation and engagement in a university-level, large-format general education geography course. One hundred and ten students participated in the study. A self-report measure was administered three times (at the beginning, middle and end of the semester). Performance…

The growing proportion of non-traditional students, very commonly defined as students over the age of 25 (though other features vary from study to study) necessitates more studies with this increasingly relevant group participating. Recently, the growth of non-traditional universities such as those offering predominantly online, accelerated…

Flipped classrooms have the potential to improve student learning and metacognitive skills as a result of increased time for active learning and group work and student control over pacing, when compared with traditional lecture-based courses. We are currently running a 4-year controlled study to examine the impact of flipping an Introductory…

This study investigated whether "findability," an aspect of usability, is an important component in student perceptions of/satisfaction with online courses and, as such, should be considered more heavily in online course design. Using standard usability testing measures, such as eye-tracking, time-on-task, and think-alouds, participants…

Engagement and motivation are not one and the same, but motivation can be transformed into engagement with proper design of support. In this study, we examined the differences between high performers and low performers with regard to changes in their motivation, regulation, and engagement throughout the semester. Participants were 100 students…

The purpose of this action research study was to determine the effectiveness of two online college success courses: CPD 150 (College Success, 3 credits) and CPD 115 (Success Strategies, 1 credit), at Rio Salado College, a Maricopa Community College in Arizona. The goal of these courses is to prepare students to be college-ready by examining…

First-year university students (n = 185) completed an online questionnaire that allowed comparison of those who reported studying on-campus with those who reported studying fully-online. Independent sample t-tests compared the means of students in the two study modes on demographics, frequency of use of digital technology and metacognitive…