Self-Regulation of Learning

Self-regulated learning refers to one’s ability to understand and control one’s learning environment. Self-regulation abilities include goal setting, self-monitoring, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement (Harris & Graham, 1999; Schraw, Crippen, & Hartley, 2006; Shunk, 1996). Self-regulation should not be confused with a mental ability or an academic performance skill. Instead, self-regulation is a self-directive process and set of behaviors whereby learners transform their mental abilities into skills (Zimmerman, Bonnor, & Kovach, 2002) and habits through a developmental process (Butler, 1995, 1998, 2002) that emerges from guided practice and feedback (Paris & Paris, 2001).

Paris and Paris (2001) consider that effective learners are self-regulating; they used to analyze task requirements, set productive goals; and select, adapt, or invent strategies to achieve their objectives. These kinds of learners also monitor progress as they work through the task, managing intrusive emotions and waning motivation as well as adjusting strategies processed to foster success. In my experience these are the students who usually ask questions, take notes and allocate their time and their resources in ways that help them to be in charge of their own learning.

The importance of teaching self-regulated learning at the university is rooted in the evidence that good self-regulators have developed the skills and habits to be effective learners, exhibiting effective learning strategies, effort, and persistence. The key for instructors is to understand how to foster and train these skills in all students.

Self-regulated learning strategies help to prepare learners for lifelong learning and the important capacity to transfer skills, knowledge, and abilities from one domain or setting to another. Suggestions for developing self-regulation in the adult education classroom follow:

• Cognitive strategies include learning strategies that can be specific to a domain or content. Problem solving strategies and critical thinking skills are also important. Critical thinking involves a variety of skills such as identifying a particular source of information and reflecting on whether or not that information is consistent with one’s prior knowledge. Activities to help adults articulate and practice critical thinking include comprehension activities such as student-generated questions before or during reading to focus the learner’s attention, constructing graphs and tables of real-world issues, and engaging in classroom debate to articulate arguments for writing a persuasive essay.
• The metacognitive component is comprised of declarative knowledge (knowledge about oneself as a learner—the factors that influence performance), procedural knowledge (knowledge about strategies and other procedures), and conditional knowledge (knowledge of why and when to use a particular strategy). Adults often struggle to articulate their knowledge or to transfer domain-specific knowledge to a new setting. The goal of self-regulated learning is for these strategies to first become visible and eventually automated for the adult learner. One way to make the three types of knowledge visible in the classroom is to have learners do a demonstration. When demonstrating (such as cooking a particular dish), it is easier to find the specific words needed to articulate what one is doing and how one knows to do it. Questions will draw out more language. Debriefing after the demonstration can make visible the difference between declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge so that one can make explicit points about how to transfer that knowledge to an academic task.
• The motivation component includes both self-efficacy (degree to which one is confident that one can perform a task or accomplish a goal) and epistemological beliefs (beliefs about the origin and nature of knowledge). Working with adults who have failed in school or with specific academic tasks necessitates deliberate discussion of their sense of self-efficacy. Many adult learners have shared with teachers and researchers how difficult it can be to overcome ingrained, virulent, negative self-talk. Making self-regulated strategy development (SRSD), including goal setting, monitoring and displaying of progress, an everyday feature of instruction can assist these learners to replace negative self-talk with positive self-instruction and a sense of self as an effective learner. Building new habits reinforces adults’ persistence and motivation.

Adult educators work diligently to help adults become successful, independent learners. Self-regulated learning strategies are research-based instructional techniques to help learners monitor and manage their own learning skills and habits. When paired with strategy instruction and metacognitive processes, instructors have a powerful learning toolkit to share with learners.

Teaching Students with Varying Levels of Competency

In competency based learning students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs, because educators’ commitment is to prepare students for the next level and work place. As a consequence educators have to effectively meet the needs of students of all races, classes, and cultures. It also demands their vigilance in challenging inequity.

There are many strategies educators might use to engage and support learning of students at varying competency levels. The main of those strategies are described as follow:

1. Build an environment rooted in a growth mindset that supports risk taking and help seeking, in order to increase students’ enthusiasm for challenging tasks with the knowledge that if learning is occurring, support will be necessary. For this condition I used to create routines and a shared language to build competencies that foster and reward support seeking and personalized learning with support that mirrors the learning of students’ needs.
2. Utilize Assessments that are transparent, ongoing, and provide meaningful feedback to support student learning and agency with the purpose of each assessment is transparent and useful to students and teachers. I used multiple assessments to gain a deeper understanding of the students’ progress, and regularly reflect on the outcomes and implications of assessments, as they relate to student learning goals and competency progression.
3. Develop embedded, tiered, and timely interventions for just-in-time support that leads to successfully meeting or exceeding the learning targets. For example: students’ interventions are grounded in assessments, in order to shorter learning cycles with fewer, more integrated learning targets are developed to allow for immediate intervention and feedback. At the same time, adaptive partnerships are created for necessary student services that are beyond the scope of the university with blended learning and adaptive digital tools expand options and provide choices for ways students can practice, apply skills, and demonstrate evidence of learning.
4. Develop extended opportunities to learn within and beyond traditional school times and settings, including internships, online learning, project-based learning, summer classes, and more. I used to provide students different means for contact in order to increase their opportunities to learn and to receive support extend beyond the university day and academic time. I give them opportunities to schedule and use of time supports the integration of learning outside of university in order students can demonstrate mastery of competency through anywhere/anytime learning experiences. As a teacher, I know how to access a network of learning experiences inside and outside of university to support students at various stages of learning.
5. Know the whole student and seek to understand their life and their learning studying their background with information in university data base. In competency based learning is important students and teachers work together to make sense of assessments, learning strengths, and learning needs.

Experiences in Learning and Assessment

As I explained in previous blogs, I am very used to competency based learning, and as a consequence, to competency assessment.

I teach three majors at Universidad Privada del Norte, each of them with different kinds of competencies, which represent, at the same time, different kinds of assessment:

• For Microeconomics, which is located in the second year, and is a basic level course, I use case studies, because it enables students’ problem-solving techniques and underlying knowledge as they respond to real-world scenarios or situations.
• For Corporate Finance, which is located in the third year, and Investment Finance, which is located in the four year, I use journals to assess intermediate competency, because students reflect on and draw conclusions about their learning activities, skills, and knowledge gained through a series of targeted writing prompts, at the same time I use simulations because they replicate field and/or workplace performances by giving students the opportunity to demonstrate competencies in simulated real-world experiences; and for the final competency I use essay writing because it allow students to demonstrate knowledge of competencies, communication skills, and analytical skills through writing, combined with oral presentations in order to assess students’ abilities to synthesize information and present it in a manner that is clear and understandable to others.

My experience in learning and assessment through the past five year improve my understanding of the methodologies for teaching in-deep courses, and to innovate in the continuous development of assessment instruments in order to keep students interest in they own learning process. At the same time, I had improved the rubrics and check list for every assessment instrument I designed.

What I found interested is when I review the competency assessment literature, I was able to find examples that generates new ideas for designing rubrics, checklist and observation guides for new assessment instruments that I would like to introduce in my courses.

Development of Competency’s Assessment

In one of my previous blog entitled “How to Design Learning Competencies”, I described the fifth learning session for Unit 2 as following: “At the end of the learning session the student prepares a report based in his results analysis of an MS Excel book in which applies the value at risk methodology for individual assets and a portfolio of at least 5 assets”.

For the assessment of this competency I used to ask students to write down an essay, do to this kind of tool help me ensure that students are able to demonstrate knowledge of competencies based in the analysis of information they obtained from public sources of assets prices information. At the same time, they have to develop communication skills in order to explain their data treatment and results; and, at the same time, analytical skills through writing the report in order systematize their main ideas.

From my point of view, the potential benefits and challenges of the assessment method I selected are: 1) Students have to master data analysis for assets’ pricing in order to obtain a first input for essay writing. 2) They have to comprehend the methodology used for analysing assets’ pricing and the result interpretation, as a second input for essay writing. 3) The essay writing skill is a demonstrative result because students has to explain their procedures and results interpretation in a simple and understandable form, in order any non-familiarized person will be able to capture what the students want to communicate.

Challenges in Learning Competency Design

The competency based training is a learning-oriented competency process therefore focused on the student, what this actually succeed in making thus changing the ways of planning and conducting teaching processes, which are aimed at achieving verifiable performance and change evaluation systems which are organized and developed to effectively record the performance.

Therefore, a different sequence in curriculum design is adopted, the graduate profile is determined based on the competencies valued from the world of work; and all educational processes are geared towards achieving the competencies identified in the graduate profile.

In designing learning competencies I identify the following challenges:

• How to present a competency? An active verb that identifies an action that generates a displayable result. It should include the description of the object of the action and the context in which it applies, and, at the same time, the quality indicators.
• How to present competencies in terms of learning outcomes? They must be clear and precise about what is expected the student can do and prove once the learning process is completed. They must express student’s verifiable actions or performances.
• How to develop competencies? Competencies are developed progressively, so it is necessary to consider different points on the achievements the student is reaching.

In order to overcome with the challenges described above, I consider the following recommendations:

• Establish clear learning outcomes and performance indicators as well as the time and tools to verify them, depending on whether generic or specific skills.
• Use tools to assess mastery of content at the highest level: items ordered result, development testing, cases or problems to be solved etc.
• Develop a team and validate various tools to assess performance: checklists, rating scales, rubrics.

How To Design Learning Competencies

The design of learning competencies is relevant for successful competency based learning implementation and, at the same time, it can often be a challenging task.

After checking the Best Practices for Designing Learning Competencies provided in this major, I agree with the statement that stands for competencies should be aligned to learning objectives and assessments, and as an example I propose the following explanation:

• The corporate finance course I teach has the following final competency: After completing the course, the student writes down and presents a final report on a group basis, based on the development of individual cases of financial planning, applying financial theory to a real situation, taking into account the financial principles and scenario analysis proposing recommendations aimed at maximizing the value of the firm and compare the results with empirical the course’s theory.
• Unit 2, which is entitle Risk, cost of capital and capital structure has the following competency: At the end of the unit the student writes an essay arguing his point of view on methodologies to value risk, estimates the cost of capital of the firm and structure of optimal capital, as input, based on financial information for the period 2010 - 2016 of a firm with operations in the Cajamarca region, applying different methodologies to estimate the cost of current and future capital, the structure of current and optimal capital and indicators of return and risk for the purpose of establishing action plans to maximize the value of the firm.
• Learning session number five of this unit has the following competency: At the end of the learning session the student prepares a report based in his results analysis of an MS Excel book in which applies the value at risk methodology for individual assets and a portfolio of at least 5 assets.

In the proposed example, the competencies are aligned to ensure the desired learning outcomes for my students when the practice of writing down report is require at three levels: learning session, learning unit and the course. At the same time, objectives are linked from the lowest level to the highs as the learning session is designed to build one basic competency for the whole unit; the unit is the summary of a group of competencies required for the whole of the course outcome.

Finally, the assessments are properly aligned ensure that you are measuring the desired learning outcomes of your students for each level in order to not impact negatively on student’s motivation and achievement.

CBL Learnings from Previous Challenges

Since 2010 Universidad Privada del Norte (UPN) educative model is based on competencies and it considers three perspectives, which are interrelated:

• The educator as a facilitator of the students learning: He or she guides students in order to develop their potential and provides tools for their learning.
• The student as manager of their own learning: He or she explores, experiments, builds, re-builds and re-learns.
• The curriculum as an interactive map which allows to reach the graduate profile, depending on the achievement of competencies.

My experience at UPN was implementing Competency Based-Learning (CBL) at Business School co-leading a team in two campuses: Cajamarca and Trujillo. The key points of the implementation were:

• UPN provided training to academic directors in order to understand and adopt the philosophy and methodology of BCL in the following subjects: 1) What is a CBL curriculum, 2) How to develop competencies at CBL for careers, 3) How to develop competencies for majors and how to make the inter-relationships between them and with general competencies for careers; and 4) How to develop competencies for learning sessions and how to make the inter-relationships between them and with the majors’ competencies.
• As team co-leader, I was in charge to replicate the training with my team (teachers and administrates).
• In parallel with training we implemented a plan preparing documentation for each level of CBL curriculum: 1) Career general competencies, 2) Majors’ competencies; and 3) Sessions learning’ competencies.
• After that, we make peer review of every level of CBL curriculum we developed, and make the necessary adjustments that feedback identified.
• We prepared an academic plan which systematized the proposal for changing curriculum in order to make presentations applying for approval of Faculty Dean and Academic Vice President.
• After approval, the main challenge was implementing CBL curriculum at the whole, and make follow up based on objective result indicators.

My co-leader and team successfully implemented CBL curriculum, and as a result, we were recognized but UPN. Nevertheless, the main recognition came from the students, who were able to demonstrate their learning advance based on objective assessment from educators.