The Impact Of Self-regulated Learning Strategies On MOOCs Learners

MOOCs(Massive Open Online Courses)has been becoming an important way for learners in China to seek knowledge.Previous studies have pointed out that MOOCs learners generally have poor consciousness and ability of self-regulated learning,and thus leads to their dissatisfactory online learning experience and further results in the high drop-out rate.One of the effective ways to solve this problem is to improve learners' active supervision and control of their online learning process.Therefore,it is necessary to adopt certain strategies in MOOCs learning to promote learners' self-regulated learning.Common intervention strategies include MCII(Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions),prompts,feedback,training,and intelligent support systems.However,related research indicates that those intervention strategies are more widely used in Western individualistic culture and educational concepts.With the global development of online learning,whether the self-regulated learning strategies can effectively improve the learning effect of MOOCs learners in a different culture is worth to be considered.In this case,our study selects two wide-use and practical self-regulated learning intervention strategies(i.e.,MCII and prompts)to conduct a cross-cultural comparative study on the learning effects of MOOCs learners from an individualism-collectivism perspective.128 undergraduates in the Netherlands were enrolled as participants in Study 1,and 129 undergraduates in China were enrolled as participants in Study 2.In each study,participants were randomly assigned to four groups:1)the control group,2)the prompts group,3)the MCII group,and 4)the MCII+group(i.e.MCII combined with prompts).All of them were required to complete the corresponding intervention tasks and learn three philosophy MOOCs videos.At the end of each experiment,participants' academic performance,as well as their dynamic self-motivation beliefs(i.e.task value and self-efficacy),persistence,task strategy,and self-reflection were compared across four groups.Study 1 examined the impact of self-regulated learning strategies on MOOCs learners in the Netherlands.The results showed that MCII+could most affect their self-regulated learning level.MCII could significantly affect it by keeping their task value at a certain level;MCII combined with prompts could significantly affect the self-regulated learning by maintaining the learner's task value and improving their persistence.However,prompts couldn't significantly affect the self-regulated learning level of MOOCs learners in the Netherlands.Study 2 examined the impact of self-regulated learning strategies on MOOCs learners in China.The results showed that prompts could most affect the self-regulated learning level of Chinese MOOCs learners.Prompts could significantly affect it by reducing the persistence of Chinese learners.MCII couldn't significantly affect the self-regulated learning level of MOOCs learners in China;MCII combined with prompts couldn't significantly affect the Chinese learners' self-regulated learning as well.Study 3 collected the data from study 1 and study 2.Culture was set as a between-group variable to compare the differences in self-regulated learning levels of MOOCs learners from different cultural backgrounds after receiving different strategies.The result showed that the self-motivation beliefs(i.e.,task value and self-efficacy),persistence,and task strategy,which were reported by the MOOCs learners in the Netherlands,were significantly lower than those of the MOOCs learners in China.Surprisingly,their academic performance was significantly higher than that of Chinese MOOCs learners.Last but not least,individualism-collectivism could significantly affect the role of different self-regulated learning strategies play in the task value and persistence of MOOCs learners.