Designing a moodle plugin for promoting learners’ self-regulated learning in blended learning

Abstract

After the COVID-19 pandemic, universities moved towards online and Blended Learning (BL) modes to offer greater curricular flexibility. Yet, recent research shows that students have difficulties regulating their learning strategies to adapt to the different learning modes that BL entails, which mixes face-to-face with online activities taking place in different learning contexts and environments. Prior work on Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) has explored the use of dashboard-based scaffolds for supporting students’ learning strategies. However, most existing solutions are designed for supporting students in online settings (i.e., MOOCs), disregarding the teachers’ role in BL settings and the support they need to monitor and promote students’ SRL. This paper presents the design process followed for transforming a tool designed for supporting students’ SRL in MOOCs into a Moodle plugin for BL. Following a design-based research methodological approach, we describe all the phases conducted for identifying the most appropriate indicators and visualizations for supporting SRL in BL practices, implementing and evaluating a first prototype. Results of a local evaluation with 114 teachers and a broad evaluation with 311 students shed some light on the type of indicators, dashboards and functionalities that should be considered when designing solutions for supporting SRL in BL settings