The Use of Interactive Environments to Promote Self-Regulation in Online Learning: A Literature Review

Distance education in the 21st century often relies on educational technology as the primary delivery of teaching to learners. In distance education, the source of the information and the learner do not share the same physical setting; therefore, the information is delivered by a variety of methods. The new emerging tools that are used in online learning have changed the view of pedagogical perspective in distance education. Although online learning shares some elements with traditional classroom environments, the shared elements often take very different forms, and each type of learning environment has distinct limitations and affordances. Because current practices often compare or assess the effectiveness of online learning by comparing it with traditional instruction methods, educators and researchers often find it important to consider the methods and strategies that are used in classroom settings when designing online learning environments. Online environments should provide opportunities for students to master necessary tasks by using appropriate strategies, such as self-regulation. Self-regulation is one of the predictors of student performance in both traditional and modern learning environments. In an online platform, when students use strategies that are related to self-regulation, they can regulate their personal functioning and benefit from the online learning environment by changing their behaviors accordingly. Thus, it is important to explore and embed new interactive functions to the online learning environments and lead learners to use self-regulatory behaviors in those learning environments. This article discusses the importance of self-regulation in online environments, and provides recommendations for best practices in the design and implementation of interactive online learning environments with the self-regulated learning approach.