Informing the utility of learning interventions: Investigating factors related to students’ academic achievement in classroom and online courses

Abstract

To inform the utility of interventions delivered by adaptive educational technologies, we investigated the relationship between student grades and three target constructs, namely self-regulation, motivation, and self-theory of intelligence, in classroom and online settings. To do so, we collected data from a large sample of undergraduate university students (N = 1453) enrolled in either a traditional face-to-face course or an online course and analyzed the data using hierarchical regression analysis. Prior research suggests that self-regulation, motivation, and self-theory of intelligence influence students’ academic achievement. However, to date a hierarchical regression model including all three constructs has not been tested. Our results show that self-regulation and motivational constructs are positively associated with grades, but the self-theory of intelligence construct is not. Furthermore, we show that context does matter: the model for the classroom sample explained substantially more variance in grades as compared to the online model.