Autorregulate: An Alternative to Support Self-Regulation in MOOCs

Massive Online Courses (MOOCs) suffer from the high desertion of enrolled students due to different factors, including bad time management by the participants, lack of planning, lack of help-seeking, and poor self-monitoring of their actions in the learning process, which suggests that students do not self-regulate their learning. Diverse software tools have been created to support MOOC participants by favouring self-regulated learning (SRL). However, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding how the different SRL model could be effectively, supported by ICT tools, what model inform in a better way the design of new tools to support SRL process in online setting, how the support of SRL affect the students’ performance in a MOOC environment or what is the best way to integrally evaluate the impact of the tools supporting SRL. In this article, we introduce the design and development process of the Autorregulate tool, a web application that supports self-regulation of learning in MOOCs. This tool is developed within the framework of broader research employing research-based design (RBD) to create methodological and technological tools to facilitate self-regulation in MOOCs. Autorregulate supports seven learning self-regulation strategies: goal-setting, strategic planning, time management, help-seeking, self-monitoring, self-recording (Take Note), and self-assessment, considering the SRL model proposed by Zimmerman. The tool was evaluated in a MOOC created on Moodle, with 224 participants, over three evaluation dimensions: 1) Students SRL to measure the effect of the Autorregulate tool on the self-regulation of the participants’ learning; 2) Autorregulate tool’s usability and usefulness; and 3) Participants’ interactions within SRL services. Results show participants’ high level of self-regulation of learning after the intervention (M=4,3; SD=0,85) according to the online self-regulated learning questionnaire (OSLQ). On the other hand, 92% of participants considered the Autorregulate tool usable, and 97% considered the tool useful. Finally, results show SRL services are widely used by participants, especially those supporting the strategies with better performances by participants, according to OSLQ results. The findings of this study contribute to broadening the discussion regarding the use of ITC to support SRL on MOOCs.