The Effect of Informing Agency in Self-Directed Online Learning Environments

Choices learners make when navigating a self-directed online learning tool can impact the effectiveness of the experience. But these tools often do not afford learners the agency or the information to make decisions beneficial to their learning. We evaluated the effect of varying levels of information and agency in a self-directed environment designed to teach programming. We investigated three design alternatives: informed high-agency, informed low-agency, and less informed high-agency. To investigate the effect of these alternatives on learning, we conducted a study with 79 novice programmers. Our results indicated that increased agency and information may have translated to more motivation, but not improved learning. Qualitative results suggest this was due to the burden that agency and information placed on decision-making. We interpret our results in relation to informing the design of self-directed online tools for learner agency.