The Science of Education
Mastering Academic Self-Regulation: Strategies for Student Success
A 20-module evidence-based course integrating Zimmerman's cyclical phases, Pintrich's phases and areas framework, Boekaerts' dual processing model, Winne and Hadwin's COPES model, Bandura's social cognitive theory, and contemporary research on growth mindset, synergistic mindsets, mentor mindset, and the science of durable learning. Designed for educators, clinicians, instructional designers, and program directors who want to move students from passive learning to evidence-based self-regulation.
Dr. Russ L'HommeDieu, DPT
20 Modules
20 Sections
0 Contact Hours
Multi-Modal Learning Experience
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Course Outline
1
Module 1: What Is Self-Regulated Learning?
Self-regulated learning is a cyclical, self-directive process in which learners actively set goals, select and deploy strategies, monitor their progress, and reflect on outcomes to continuously improve their learning, rather than passively receiving instruction.
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2
Module 2: Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory
Human behavior, including academic self-regulation, is shaped by the continuous reciprocal interaction among personal factors (beliefs, knowledge, attitudes), behavioral factors (actions, strategies, effort), and environmental factors (instructional context, social norms, feedback), and individuals are not passive products of their environment but active agents who can influence all three.
Core Content
Module Quiz Required to Progress
3
Module 3: Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy, a person's belief in their capability to organize and execute the actions required to achieve specific goals, is the single most powerful motivational predictor of academic self-regulation, because students who believe they can succeed are more likely to set challenging goals, persist through difficulty, recover from setbacks, and deploy effective strategies.
Core Content
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4
Module 4: Growth Mindset and Wise Interventions
A student's beliefs about whether intelligence is fixed or developable shape how they interpret difficulty, respond to failure, and regulate their own learning, and these beliefs can be changed through brief, well-designed interventions that are supported by the learning environment.
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5
Module 5: Synergistic Mindsets and Stress Reappraisal
Believing that intelligence can grow is necessary but not sufficient; students must also learn to reappraise their stress response as a resource rather than a threat, because the combination of these two mindsets produces synergistic effects that neither achieves alone.
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6
Module 6: The Mentor Mindset and Wise Feedback
The most effective educators combine high standards with high support, communicating both that the bar is real and that they believe the student can reach it, because this combination builds the trust necessary for critical feedback to be received as an investment rather than an attack.
Core Content
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7
Module 7: Zimmerman's Cyclical Phases Model
Self-regulated learning operates through three cyclical phases, forethought (planning and motivation before learning), performance (strategy use and self-monitoring during learning), and self-reflection (evaluation and attribution after learning), and the quality of each phase directly influences the quality of the next.
Core Content
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8
Module 8: Pintrich's Phases and Areas Framework
Self-regulated learning involves the regulation of four distinct areas, cognition, motivation and affect, behavior, and context, each of which operates across four phases of forethought, monitoring, control, and reaction, and effective SRL requires attention to all areas, not just cognitive strategies.
Core Content
Module Quiz Required to Progress
9
Module 9: Boekaerts' Dual Processing Model
When students encounter a learning task, they appraise it as either an opportunity for growth or a threat to well-being, and this appraisal determines whether they engage the mastery pathway (leading to productive self-regulation) or the coping pathway (leading to avoidance and disengagement), making emotion regulation central to academic self-regulation.
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10
Module 10: Winne and Hadwin's COPES Model
Self-regulated learning is fundamentally an information-processing activity in which learners set standards, monitor their products against those standards, and adjust their operations when they detect a mismatch, but this cycle fails when students use subjective feelings of familiarity rather than objective evidence of learning as their monitoring standard.
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11
Module 11: Historical Evolution and Comparative Analysis
The field of self-regulated learning has evolved from behaviorist self-management through cognitive-constructivist models to sociocognitive and situated perspectives, and understanding this evolution illuminates why multiple models exist, what each contributes, and how contemporary researchers like Yeager and Dweck connect to this broader intellectual tradition.
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12
Module 12: Desirable Difficulties and the Science of Durable Learning
The strategies that feel most productive during studying (rereading, highlighting, cramming) produce the least durable learning, while the strategies that feel most difficult (retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving) produce the most, because effort during retrieval strengthens memory in ways that ease during encoding cannot.
Core Content
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13
Module 13: Self-Transcendent Purpose and Motivation
Students who connect their academic effort to a purpose that transcends self-interest persist longer on tedious tasks, regulate their learning more effectively, and earn higher grades, because self-transcendent purpose transforms the meaning of effort from personal cost to purposeful investment.
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14
Module 14: Measuring Self-Regulated Learning
Measuring self-regulated learning requires multiple methods because SRL is a dynamic, multi-component process that cannot be captured by a single instrument, and the choice of measurement approach shapes what aspects of SRL are visible and what aspects remain hidden.
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15
Module 15: The First-Generation Student Challenge
First-generation college students face a constellation of structural, cultural, and psychological barriers that systematically undermine their academic self-regulation, and effective interventions must address these barriers at the individual, instructional, and institutional levels rather than treating self-regulation as a purely individual skill deficit.
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16
Module 16: Designing ASR Interventions
Effective academic self-regulation interventions combine theoretical grounding, evidence-based design principles, and contextual sensitivity, and the most successful programs share common features: they provide new scientific information, include stories from similar peers, incorporate reflective writing, and are embedded within supportive institutional contexts.
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17
Module 17: Technology-Enhanced Self-Regulated Learning
Digital technologies can scaffold self-regulated learning by prompting planning, providing real-time feedback, enabling spaced retrieval practice, and capturing trace data for both the learner and the instructor, but technology is a tool that supports SRL processes, not a replacement for the cognitive and motivational work that students must do themselves.
Core Content
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18
Module 18: Social and Shared Regulation of Learning
Self-regulated learning is not a purely individual process; learners also regulate collaboratively through co-regulation (where a more capable partner scaffolds another's self-regulation) and shared regulation (where a group collectively plans, monitors, and adjusts its learning), and understanding these social dimensions is essential for designing learning environments that support SRL development.
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19
Module 19: SRL Across Disciplines
Self-regulated learning principles are universal, but their application varies across disciplines because different fields impose different cognitive demands, use different types of tasks, and embed different cultural norms about what constitutes effective learning, and SRL instruction is most effective when it is integrated into disciplinary content rather than delivered as a standalone workshop.
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20
Module 20: Integrated Practitioner Framework
Effective SRL instruction integrates insights from all major theoretical models, contemporary research on mindsets and motivation, cognitive science evidence on durable learning, and practical implementation principles into a coherent framework that addresses the whole learner within their learning context.
Core Content
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