This paper describes our research approach in which we have focused on situational and contextual variations in motivation and emotion regulation to better understand its role, appearance and function in collaborative learning situations. We have used research designs that employ process-oriented measures combined with subjective interpretations…

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…

Higher education aims for deep learning and increasingly uses a specific form of online education: Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs). To overcome challenges that instructors face in order to promote deep learning through that format, the use of feedback may have significant potential. We interviewed eleven instructors and four students and…

This study starts from the observation that current empirical research on students' processing strategies in higher education has mainly focused on the use of self-report instruments to measure students' general preferences towards processing strategies. In contrast, there is a rather limited use of more direct and online observation techniques to…

Conceptions of learning are seen as an important factor in shaping students' patterns of learning. However, conceptions are often implicit and difficult to assess. Metaphors have been proposed as a method to assess conceptions, because metaphors are closely linked to the conceptual system. Therefore, in our study we assessed which conceptions of…

Many studies have explored the contribution of different factors from diverse theoretical perspectives to the explanation of academic performance. These factors have been identified as having important implications not only for the study of learning processes, but also as tools for improving curriculum designs, tutorial systems, and students'…