Self-regulation: A critical learner characteristic for seamless learning

Abstract

This chapter illustrates an inherent link between mobile seamless learning (MSL), an innovative model of learning, and self-regulated learning (SRL), an active area in contemporary educational psychology. This link is rooted at defining characteristics of MSL: learner-centric, and demanding on seamless swift across learning contexts/scenarios. These characteristics expect that learners as agents of their own learning are motivated to and to be able to learn anywhere and anytime. Based on this link, an analytic SRL model of mobile learning was proposed as a conceptual framework for understanding mobile learning, in which the notion of self-regulation as agency is at the core along with the recognition of mobile devices as social, cognitive, and metacognitive tools, and importance of teachers’ and parental autonomy supports. This model elicits that the advanced mobile technologies and devices just provide the technological and physical infrastructure of and the possibility for mobile seamless learning, and learners’ SRL knowledge and skills is essential for learners to realize this possibility by engaging themselves in MSL behaviorally, motivationally, and metacognitively.