Impact of Motivation and Strategy Use on Performance in a Blended Learning Course

Abstract

Understanding students’ self-regulatory learning (SRL) processes is important, especially in Blended Learning (BL). This study examined the predictability of students’ final scores based on indicators from students’ reported measures reflecting SRL. We administrated the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MLSLQ) three times to measure students’ motivation belief and use of learning strategies (N=189) and collected 515 viable surveys. We found that students’ motivation and strategy use dropped until midterm and it increased again as the course progressed towards the end. We identified the constructs that had a high correlation with final scores. In terms of prediction, stepwise regression mostly used motivational components as predictors. The findings confirmed the importance of understanding students’ motivation and SRL process and disclosed the advantages of using students’ reported measures of SRL, which is meaningful to Learning Analytics. The findings also support the potential for an early final score prediction, which would be very helpful in identifying at-risk students, addressing one of the LA aims.