Does Training on Self-Regulated Learning Facilitate Students' Learning With Hypermedia?

The authors examined the effectiveness of self-regulated learning (SRL) training in facilitating college students ’ learning with hypermedia. Undergraduate students (N 131) were randomly assigned to either a training condition or a control condition and used a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system. Students in the SRL group were given a 30-min training session on the use of specific, empirically based SRL variables designed to foster their conceptual understanding; control students received no training. Pretest, posttest, and verbal protocol data were collected from both groups. The SRL condition facilitated the shift in learners ’ mental models significantly more than did the control condition; verbal protocol data indicated that this was associated with the use of the SRL variables taught during training. Hypermedia environments have the potential to be powerful learning tools for fostering students ’ learning about complex top-ics. Hypermedia environments provide students with random, dy-namic, nonlinear access to a wide range of information represented as text, graphics, animation, audio, and video (Jacobson & Archodidou, 2000; Jonassen, 1996). However, too few learners are skilled at regulating their learning to optimize what they learn (Hadwin & Winne, 2001). The majority of studies has shown that using hypermedia often leads to very little learning (see Dillon & Gabbard, 1998; Shapiro & Niederhauser, 2004). For the most part, these studies have found that students learn little with hypermedia environments and do not deploy key self-regulatory processes and mechanisms such as effective cognitive strategies and metacogni-tive monitoring during learning (see, e.g., Azevedo, Guthrie, &