Library of patterns to support self-regulated learning
in Technology-enriched learning environment

How to Support
Learner's Self-Regulation

What does it mean
self-regulated learning

Self-regulated learning refers to the process of actively managing one's own learning by setting goals, monitoring progress, and making necessary adjustments to achieve those goals.

Three Phases for supporting Self-Regulation

Support learner in process of planning, monitoring and reflecting on their learning.
The learner goes through the cycle "plan - monitor - reflect" cycle.

Forethought phase

This is the initial phase of planning and preparation, which involves setting the goals for learning, understanding and analysing the task, selecting effective learning strategies to use, and activating prior knowledge and relevant resources to support learning. This phase is critical in learning as it helps students to approach tasks with purpose, which could increase the likelihood of successful learning outcomes.

Performance phase

This is the phase in learning, in which students engage in the task and use the strategies they have selected during the forethought phase. Monitor their learning and make adjustments to their strategies.

Effective performance phase management is critical for achieving learning goals and improving performance outcomes.

Self-reflection phase

This is the final phase of the learning in which students evaluate and reflect their learning experience, assess their progress against their goals, and identify strengths and weaknesses in their learning process. Effective self-reflection helps students to develop a deeper understanding of their learning process and improve their ability to self-regulate in future learning situations.

Strategies for supporting
self-regulated learning

STRATEGY 1

Help learners with task understanding

Often the lack of learning motivation or poor academic achievement is due to inaccurate or poor task understanding.

Help learners with task understanding

Task understanding is knowing WHAT TO DO and HOW TO DO.
View methods for supporting

STRATEGY 2

Support to set goal

Students lack of strategies for creating effective learning plan, which hinders the selection of suitable learning strategies
View methods for supporting

STRATEGY 3

Support to choose suitable learning strategies

Usage of poor learning strategy hinders efficient learning experience. Suitable learning strategies foster students to be engaged with the learning material and process
View methods for supporting

STRATEGY 4

Support to monitor students’ learning process

View methods for supporting

How to help learners
with task understanding

Learner expected behavior

How Teacher could force this process

Learner should ask yourself

What is the task about?
Did I understand it
How did I understand?
What should I do?

Asking these questions is expected learning behaviour for a self-regulated learner.
The student should know what to do if the task is not clear to him or her.

Ask a learner  to explain in your own words how he or she understood a task. 

How to organise?

  1. Ask students to read the task and make clear for themselves (1 min.);
  2. Then students in pairs or in groups share own understanding (2 min);
  3. Each pair or group share own understanding or way of thinking or questions with teacher and whole class.

Methods: Think-Pair-Share, discussion

Tools: Mentimeter (Open question), Google Presentation

Example from practice: The teacher Anni assigned a math problem assignment to the 8th-grade students.

First of all, the teacher explains the purpose of the assignment and talks about the importance of task understanding in problem-solving. And then ask students to focus on task understanding before solving. The teacher shows on the slide of Google Presentation a short description of the method Think-Pair-Share and instructions to students for work.

Students discuss for three minutes. Then the teacher opens the Mentimeter environment and asks them to write their understanding. After the teacher provide feedback on each answer and correct it, if necessary.

Then the teacher and class have the same understanding of what to do and how students start with problem-solving.

Give some time and clear instruction for student for reading tasks and emergent questions about that. And then provide brainstorm for collecting all questions and discuss with students about them.

Methods. Brainstorm, discussion

Tool: Mentimetr, Slido

Instructions could write on the slide and show through projector or write them on the learner worksheet. 

For example:
1. Read the instruction first;
2. Read again;
3. If you understand task requirements, start;
4. If you can’t understand, then … (ask your teacher, classmate)

Ask to read the task and choose which explanation best/correctly describes it.

You can put different explanations  (them could be up to 5) on the slide of presentations or present them using some tools for creating a quiz.

Method. Discussion

Tools: Mentimeter, Kahoot,  Quizizz

How to support learners
to set goal

Learner expected behavior

How Teacher could force this process

Learner could do:

What are my goals for today/week/ semester?
Do I understand the purpose and requirement of the task?
Are there terms/concepts which I don’t know and who could help me to understand those concepts?
Goals could be presented like criteria or standards, that help learner to monitor and evaluate own achievement.

Share with learners learning outcomes for the lesson and plan of activities.

How to organise?

  1. At the beginning of the lesson, show on the Google slide with learning outcomes (1 or 2) of the lesson and explain how the work will be organized for achieving their.
  2. At the and of the lesson, show learning outcomes again and ask learners to assess did the achieve goal or not? And what kind of support do they need for achieving?

Tools: Google Presentation

Help to understand/estimate how much time is spent on solving the task and allocate this time.

How to organise

  1. Ask either in pairs or individually to investigate the task or learning material during 5 min;
  2. Give time up 5 min and ask learners to estimate how much time goes in their opinion for solving or studying;
  3. Ask their opinions (or investigate vote results on Mentimeter slide) .
  4. Give the time they need.

Methods. Discussion

Tool: Mentimetr, tools for survey

Ask students to set goals for certain period of time and to revise the goal regularly.

Example. Hans is a 10th-grade history teacher. With students, he started the new three-week learning project “Old Tallinn”. The goal of the project is to investigate the history of Tallinn city and, according to this information set up a plan for the tour and conduct a tour in the centre of Tallinn.

To support students, he prepared a worksheet using Google Documents, that students will use and fill during the whole project.

At the beginning of the project, Hans introduces the idea of the project to students and ask them to write down their own goal. During project activities, Hans reminds students to check the goal and at the end of the project estimate the achievement.

Tools: Google Document, Google Spreadsheet

How do support to choose suitable learning strategies

Learner expected behavior

How Teacher could force this process

Students can ask

What might help me to move forward with my tasks?
Asking these questions is expected learning behaviour for a self-regulated learner.

Practicing retrieving information from memory.

Methods:

  • Flashcards: Use flashcards to quiz students on key concepts, definitions, or facts. 
  • Concept mapping – ask students to create concept mapping tools to  create visual maps of the relationships between concepts 
  • Note-taking – ask students to organise and review notes on key concepts, theories 
  • Quizzes – activate students’ prior knowledge with quizzes 

 

Example:

Elina organises activities for 1st-grade students using the Station Rotation learning model. One station connected with using digital tools, and she uses Quizlet for creating flashcards and quizzes for students. Elina creates learning materials for repeating different topics. Usually, students use their own devices, but if someone hasn’t – school tablet.

Tools:

  • Flashcards: Quizlet
  • Mindmapping: Mindmeister, Popplet, XMind, CMap
  • Note-taking: Evernote, Notion, Notes on iOS, Google Documents, Blog, Padlet
  • Quizzes: Kahoot, Quizzes, Mentimeter

Connecting new information to existing knowledge and elaborating on the relationships between them to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the material.

Methods:

  • Mind mapping – ask students to create visual diagrams to connect different ideas and concepts, to support the elaboration of understanding of the relationship between ideas.
  • Note-taking – ask students to take notes during the instructional activity and organize notes that connect new information to existing knowledge 
  • Collaborative exercise – encourage students to work collaboratively to brainstorming generating ideas 
  • Visualization of abstract ideas – support students to create visuals, podcasts, videos to elaborate complex concepts and deepen their understanding of how different ideas relate to one another.

Tools:

  • Mindmapping: Mindmeister, Popplet, XMind, CMap
  • Note-taking: Evernote, Notion, Notes on iOS, Google Documents, Blog, Padlet
  • Collaborative work: Google Drive, Google Jamboard, Padlet
  • Visualization: Google Drawing, app.diagrams.net

Support students to categorize and organize information.

Methods:

    • Organizing materials: Encourage students to use Google Drive or any other cloud solution to store and organize their digital files, such as notes, presentations, and tasks.
    • Task lists: Encourage students to create to-do lists for your study tasks and projects, set priorities, and track your progress over time.
    • Project management tools: In collaborative projects, encourage students to project management tools to share tasks, track the progress.

Support to monitor students’ learning process

Students can ask

What progress have I made so far?
Where do I go from here?
What could help me to go on from here?
What has stopped me from going on from here?
Asking these questions is expected learning behaviour for a self-regulated learner.

Guide students to these actions:

  1. Checking the completeness of task performance (e.g., Did I forget to fill in a number? Are there still empty spaces?)
  2. Checking the correctness of a solution (e.g., Let’s have a look whether everything is correct [Student starts to count all the numbers per row.])
  3. Recapitulating task instructions (e.g., I had to fill in a number from 1 through 9 in each row, column, and block and that is what I have done.) 
  4. Scanning the source text to check memorisation (e.g., [Student quickly scans the text before handing in the documents])

Tools: check-list in Google Docs

Usage of quizzes can help learners assess their understanding of material and track their progress over time.

Example: Jüri is a 9th-grade math teacher and sometimes uses the Flipping Classroom model. His students watch the short 5 min video at home. In the classroom, they continue with deep learning tasks. Students asked Jüri to create self-assessment tests. They were interested in better understanding the information in the video. And in addition to learning videos, Jüri creates quizzes or text with gaps using LearningApps or H5P apps. The tests help students to check their understanding of a topic. During a meeting with Jüri, they ask questions or share miss-understanding.

Tools: Kahoot, Quizlet, LearningApps, H5P, Teacher.Desmos, Student.Desmos

Methods:

In worksheets use prompts  – that ask:

    • “What was your major contribution for this task?”;
    • “How can you improve your learning next time?
    • ”
Rating or self-evaluation for the students 
    • “Did you achieve your goal”?

Guide students to reflect:

  • on task difficulty (e.g., It was harder than I thought) 
  • on self-efficacy (e.g., I am quite good at solving Sudokus) 
  • on task interest or value (e.g., That was interesting)

Tools: Google Documents, Google Form