When to Intervene? Utilizing Two Facets of Temporality in Students’ SRL Processes in a Programming Course

Abstract

This study explored two aspects of temporality in students’ SRL behaviours to understand the dynamics of SRL phase transitions. In the first aspect, which refers to the temporal order of Self-regulated learning (SRL) phases, we characterized four types of SRL processes based on phase transitions and the cyclical nature of SRL. The SRL types were mapped into the kinds of iterative behaviours over SRL phases which correspond to the theorized self-regulatory behaviours of students at different levels of SRL skills. We found a significant association between SRL types and the assignment grades that suggests the higher achieved learning outcomes, i.e., programming skills demonstrated in the assignments, being associated with more advanced SRL processes. This study also focused on the second aspect of temporality, which refers to the instance of time. We revealed the temporal dynamics between SRL phase transitions by analyzing time profiles for transitions in each SRL process type. Next, we showed that a two-day interval is a threshold by which most students iteratively transition from adapting to enactment phases, which provides a suitable time to intervene if the transition is not observed.