As education is remodelled to online solutions, instructors and students are required to adapt their teaching and learning through different forms of monitoring, regulation and assessment. This remodelling requires conceptual and philosophical reflection relating to stakeholder roles and the relationship between learners and teaching materials within digital learning spaces. With a sample of 276 student participants, this article reports from a Japanese university which shifted all regular face-to-face lectures online at short notice during 2020. Self-regulated learning is drawn from to test a primary thesis that online self-regulated learning impacts achievement. It was hypothesized that metacognitive skills provide the foundation for online self-regulated learning but are not able to exert a direct effect on achievement as such skills must be mediated through applied behavioral action. Three criterion models indicated limited achievement effect sizes between 11.1% and 12.6%. The outcomes are discussed in relation to online learning and pedagogies relevant to distance education in the era of change.