With an increase in technology to mediate learning and a shift to more student-centred approaches, open-ended online assignment tasks are becoming more common in higher education. Open-ended tasks offer opportunities for students to develop their own interpretations of the requirements, and online technologies offer greater flexibility and afford…

Task-specific goals play a critical role in self-regulated learning, yet little research has examined students' self-set goals for authentic study sessions. We propose high-quality goals that are useful for guiding task engagement and evaluating progress are specific about (a) time, (b) actions, (c) standards, and (d) content. In Study 1, we…

Research shows that a surface approach to learning is more common among students in the natural sciences, while students representing the "soft" sciences are more likely to apply a deep approach. However, findings conflict concerning the stability of approaches to learning in general. This study explores the variation in students'…