Article Review #6 - Cho

Chris Wills

Cho, M. (2004). The effects of design strategies for promoting students' self-regulated learning skills on students' self-regulation and achievements in online learning environments. Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 27, 174-179.

What was/were the research question(s) in the article?

Cho’s research intent in this research effort is to determine if designing self-regulation activities into course content promotes learners’ level of self-regulation and overall achievement.  To do so, Cho focuses on two research questions, which are specifically expressed in the article as follows:

·         Will students studying in learning environments, which are designed to forcefully encourage the practice of SRL skills, show a higher self-regulation than others studying in normal learning environments, which don’t support SRL activities?

·         Will students studying in learning environments, which are designed to forcefully encourage the practice of SRL skills, show a higher achievement than others studying in normal learning environments, which don’t support SRL activities?

Was the literature review relevant to the research question(s)?

The literature review provided numerous diverse citations of prior research regarding cognitive and metacognitive activities, resource management activities, and affective activities, which the author defines as the self-regulated learning strategies most critical for learner success in self-regulated learning.  A review of cognitive activities includes defining encoding processes, and Cho appropriately notes that “[C]ognitive activities vary depending on the learning domain.”  Metacognitive practices also receive sufficient attention, beginning with goal setting as a primary meta-cognitive practice and including a good description of the nuanced difference between self-evaluation and self-monitoring; I’ve often thought of these two terms as interchangeable, but Cho’s description seems to indicate that the results of self-evaluation are used as the inputs to self-monitoring to help learners assess progress toward their goals.

Cho cites research stating that “activities for resource management are not directly related to cognitive and metacognitive activities,” but I would contend that resource management activities as defined in the article – time and effort management, seeking information and help from others – are part of self-monitoring.  Affective activities, including measures of self-efficacy and volition, are also considered as important aspects of self-regulated learning.

What was the methodology used and was it sound?

The sample for this study consisted of 30 students at a Korean university who volunteered to be part of a month-long research effort during instruction to prepare for the online Test of Written English (TWE).  Students were randomly assigned into either a treatment group or the control group, and were given a pre-test and post-test to measure self-regulated learning skills and essay response levels before and after the treatment.  Students also completed essays using the TWE format prior to and after treatment.

A self-regulated learning strategies questionnaire was administered to gauge students’ pre-treatment and post-treatment self-assessment of self-regulated learning skills.  The questionnaire contained 84 questions, covering cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and behavior strategies, with responses measured using a five-point Likert scale. 

Students received twelve sessions of instruction via online learning sites; the control group received instruction in a program designed using Gagné’s nine events of instruction, and the treatment group received instruction via a program designed to include self-regulated learning strategies.  The treatment group’s site was specifically designed to provide guidance in self-regulated learning, and included five menu items and/or links to pages covering setting course goals, planning learning resources, establishing learning goals, following learning strategies, and writing a reflective diary.

The methodology used appears to be sound.  I would question the quality of responses on the pre- and post-treatment questionnaire responses given its length; I would surmise that as one responded to questions, the amount of thought given to the later questions would diminish as students wanted to “just get it over with.”

What were the results?

Cho interpreted the results using an independent samples T-test.  The results are not specifically broken out between pre-test and post-test scores for the questionnaire and the essay; Cho only makes vague statements indicating the relative equality of the groups and the only table depicting results concatenates the pre-treatment and post-treatment questionnaire results.

According to Cho, neither pre-test nor post-test questionnaire results show a significant difference between the treatment group and the control group.  Also, there was no significant difference in TWE level between two groups, and although the article does not reference whether this was the pre-treatment TWE score or the post-treatment score, Cho correctly infers that this lack of a significant difference demonstrates that the treatment of having students practice SRL skill was not effective.

After analyzing the results and determining that the treatment did not have any impact on either the students’ self-assessment of self-regulated learning skills or their TWE scores, Cho also gathered qualitative data via interviews with the subjects in the experimental group to attempt to explain the lack of expected results.  Responses indicated that the students in the treatment group did not have sufficient context to understand the importance of self-regulated learning instruction beyond the TWE lessons; presumably, those who felt they had a strong ability to regulate their work saw the additional assignments as “busy work” and questioned its necessity, and those who presumably were less-experienced in self-regulated learning did not know how or why to practice these skills.

Were the conclusions consistent with the methodology and results?

The conclusions were indeed consistent with the results.  Cho indicates three main findings, the most important of which is that students must be allowed to design their own self-regulation strategies.  This finding is based on the first two findings, that students cannot be expected to significantly increase their self-regulation abilities in a short period of time, and formal training in self-regulation activities is not a good way to promote such activities.  Students’ self-efficacy and volition appears to play a significant role in whether or not they are willing and able to accept instruction in self-regulated learning strategies, which can be explained either by saying that students who feel they are already adept at regulating their own learning don’t see the necessity of formalized instruction in these strategies, or that students who don’t understand the importance of self-regulation are not likely to see a benefit in practicing such activities.

What interested you most about the article? What questions did it raise?

This article was interesting to me because self-regulation is so personal that I don’t think it’s possible to formally instruct people in self-regulation with any meaningful results.  In the United States, we often seem to emphasize personal responsibility and assume that each knows best about his or her own abilities, and offer only vague guidance about self-improvement, so I was intrigued to read about an effort to force students into practicing these types of activities.  While teaching about strategies could be important and might lead to some improvement in those at the lower end of the spectrum, I question whether the questionnaire used in this study and the TWE essay exam were appropriate measures of the impact of the instruction.

I’d like to see a broader study with a different design for the two groups.  I think that if self-regulation practice was permitted but not mandatory for the treatment group, there might be an overall lift in scores based on an increased performance by those who are less able to perform self-regulation activities.