Self-regulated Learning and Age in a Hybrid Course

Earlier this spring, I worked with a wonderful faculty member to conduct research into a new hybrid version of an introductory Spanish course at our university.  He changed some sections of a 4-credit course that typically meets four days each week to so that they only met two days each week with a substantial increase in online activity.  I presented a paper on this research at the recent AIR conference with the basic questions: (a) Did students learn more or less in these hybrid sections? and (b) Did students who were more motivated or exhibited better study skills – measured using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) – learn more?

The full details are in the paper but it appears that the answers to our questions are:

1. Students didn’t learn any more or less in the hybrid sections.  This is consistent with the larger body of research that has found “no significant difference” between courses taught using different media.  In fact, this is good news in some ways since we can implement more hybrid sections and courses with some confidence that student learning won’t be negatively impacted.  This is particularly beneficial for us as these small four-credit courses require a lot of classroom space.
2. The impact of self-regulated learning is unclear.  Of the three outcome measures included in this study, performance on the MSLQ was only partially related to two outcomes.  This is contrary to our expectations as it seems reasonable that students who are motivated and use better study skills would learn more.

To me, the most interesting part of this study is the role of age in predicting student learning. We created several multiple regression models and age was a negative predictor of student grades but a positive predictor of improved proficiency in reading Spanish. In other words, after we accounted for things such as race/ethnicity and gender, older students tended to earn lower grades but they also seemed to learn more about reading Spanish (but not about listening to Spanish).  So older students have learned how to study more effectively and are more motivated to learn, right?  No, at least not according to the MSLQ results: Age was not significantly correlated with the MSLQ results.

In addition to the quantitative measures used in this study, we also interviewed several students.  At the same time, we also repeatedly interviewed students in some math courses that were also being modified – “flipped” – during the same semester.  We were consistently impressed with the older students in our interview sessions and very much enjoyed their maturity and self-reflection.  That suggests an interesting hypotheses: Were the older students in this study were simply less concerned with grades and more concerned about learning?