How does technology support regulation of learning? A systematic review of the design and efficacy of interventions

Students who successfully regulate their learning are more successful in higher education. As higher education increasingly adopts hybrid and flexible approaches, the importance of regulatory skills increases. Technology may support students in developing and applying regulatory skills. However, current literature displays a significant gap on exactly how technology contributes to what in regulation of learning.

This systematic literature review addresses how technology can foster regulation of learning in higher education. We identified and analysed 136 studies describing empirical research on interventions using technology to support self-regulation, co-regulation or socially shared regulation of learning in higher education. To warrant a thorough analysis of how technology supports regulation, we distinguished between the medium used and the methods implemented within the interventions.

The findings indicate a growing research interest, shifting from a primary focus on individual self-regulation towards co-regulation and socially shared regulation in groups of learners. It is promising that stronger study designs are used, with multimodal measurements and decent sample sizes and running durations. Most studies were conducted in online or blended learning environments. Self-regulated learning is predominantly supported by interactive tools, through scaffolding, feedback, and prompting. For co-regulation and socially shared regulation, conversational tools implementing scaffolding and feedback are used most. No studies implemented fading scaffolds; only static scaffolding was used.

Most notably, we found that intervention designs were often insufficiently specified. This study presents an approach to describe intervention designs more clearly in future work, by listing explicit, theory-informed categories for medium and method.