COMPUTER-MEDIATED SELF-REGULATION OF LEARNING
Authors: Stanciu Ionutdorin , Bocos Musata , Andronache Daniel cosmin 
Published: February 2023

The pervasiveness of ITC, both in daily and school activities, makes the utilization of computers not only an interesting research topic but also a relevant indicator of the student’s academic learning activities. The learning activities become increasingly more self-regulated as the student’s age increases and advances through the educational levels. The utilization of ITC for learning is ultimately intended to provide an efficient tool for enhancing the academic proficiency of the learner. However, this utilization depends on various other factors, including the computer literacy of the user, the acceptance of technology, and the purpose of utilization. Moreover, the use of learning tools, including ITC-based methods, may be impacted by other personal factors, such as the academic sense of control and the rationality of the individual.
Rationality and academic control have a relevant contribution on most of the self-regulated learning strategies. The use of ITC in learning is also significantly approached, both theoretically and empirically. Nevertheless, there is limited empirical evidence as to the impact of ITC-based methods on the self-regulation of learning, and even more scare evidence of the interplay between academic control, rationality and the use of ITC. Our hypothesis is that the utilization of ITC for performing academic tasks intermediates between the rationality and the sense of control, and impacts positively on the self-regulation of learning and the academic performance. In order to test this hypothesis, we designed a transversal, one-time correlational study in order to determine the influence of ITC on the students’ self-regulation of learning, and ITC’s variations with the academic control and rationality of the individual. Self-report measures of the measured variables were used and the participants were secondary education students, ranging from gymnasium to high school students.
A conceptual model resulted which allows the fitting of ITC utilization in the self-regulation of learning and its relation with academic control and irrationality was developed. The study confirmed our initial hypothesis of influence regarding the use of ITC on self-regulated learning strategies and open new direction of research regarding more discriminatory analysis of the variables involved. The relevance for the educational research stems from the explanatory power of the model upon the interplay of academic control, rationality and ITC utilization for learning, as independent variables, as well as from providing evidence regarding the utilization of ITC in the learning activities of the Romanian secondary school students. The relevance for the educational practice comes from allowing teachers to employ the utilization of ITC-based methods in the learning activities of their students, with an aim to increase academic performance and self-regulation of learning. The limitations of the study, residing in its transversal, one-time correlational nature, requires further, experimental research to verify the constructed influence pathways as well as to better determine the amount of variance induced by the independent variable in the self-regulation of learning. Additionally, longitudinal studies can provide relevant results regarding the stability of the impact that the use of ITC-based academic tasks has on the self-regulation of learning.