SRLx: A Personalized Learner Interface for MOOCs

Abstract

Past research in large-scale learning environments has found one of the most inhibiting factors to learners' success to be their inability to effectively self-regulate their learning efforts. In traditional smallscale learning environments, personalized feedback (on progress, content, behavior, etc.) has been found to be an effective solution to this issue, but it has not yet widely been evaluated at scale. In this paper we present the Personalized SRL Support System (SRLx), an interactive widget that we designed and open-sourced to improve learners' self-regulated learning behavior in the Massive Open Online Course platform edX. SRLx enables learners to plan their learning on a weekly basis and view real-time feedback on the realization of those plans. We deployed SRLx in a renewable energies MOOC to more than 2,900 active learners and performed an exploratory analysis on our learners' SRL behavior.

A MOOC‐based flipped experience: Scaffolding SRL strategies improves learners’ time management and engagement

“…In the past few years, some researchers have taken these works as a basis for exploring how to scaffold SRL strategies in MOOCs, where learners do not have the support and guidance typical of other formal online or f2f environments. A great number of these works propose technological solutions for enhancing the online environment and supporting strategies that are a combination of hard and soft scaffolds (e.g., Learning Tracker [14]; MyLearningMentor [5]; NoteMyProgress (NMP) [49] ProSolo [31]; SRLx [13]), that is, these solutions provide a guide with a set of fixed functionalities for supporting certain strategies (hard scaffold). However, at the same time, these functionalities collect information from the learners that allows providing adapted feedback according to their actual behavior (soft scaffold).…”

Exploring the link between self‐regulated learning and learner behaviour in a massive open online course

“…Since insufficient SRL can lead to student dropout, multiple researchers have attempted to support learners' SRL by implementing an SRL intervention in a MOOC (Davis et al, 2018; Kizilcec et al, 2016; Yeomans & Reich, 2017). Exploring the influence of SRL on learner behaviour could help increase the impact of such SRL interventions.…”

Tools Designed to Support Self-Regulated Learning in Online Learning Environments: A Systematic Review

“…While the majority of authors cited a theoretical model as a starting point for the design of their tool, very few justify their theoretical choice. Some authors explicitly claim to have used Zimmerman's model for it being the one that best represents learning as a cyclical process [23], [25], [36]- [46], while other authors used Pintrich's model because it clearly defines strategies associated with each of the four phases of the SRL process. These strategies can be broken down into "observable actions" that can be subsequently linked to particular learning activities within their tool [36].…”

“…For example, Mastery Grids system [22], and Learning Tracker [23], [24] are tools designed to support SRL strategies online and, at the same time, both tools are tracking data to measure the impact of the tools on learners' SRL. Specifically, Davis et al [25] proposed a widget for the edX platform, which supports learners in setting weekly goals and provides real-time feedback on the progress of their planning, encouraging learners to become more engaged with the course. Guerra et al [22] proposed an intelligence interface that supports learners in navigating learning content, allowing them to monitor their progress in the course, and comparing their performance with the performance of their peers.…”