Li, Qiujie

Many college students struggle with regulating the time and effort they invest in classes. We used digital trace data from a learning management system to examine students' behavioral engagement and associations with course performance in four chemistry courses (N = 1596). Results from Study 1a show that behavioral engagement declined across the course, except for high spikes in exam weeks. Students with higher regularity and continued engagement after midterm exams obtained higher course grades, whereas steep increases in study activities shortly before exams did not predict performance. Using a selective subsample of students (n = 51, with 510 observations over time) who identified chemistry as a challenging course, Study 1b explores whether intentions to regulate learning behaviors with goal-directed control strategies lead to changes in behavioral engagement. Intentions to use control strategies lead to short-term changes in behavioral engagement, but students did not implement planned adjustments to their study behaviors in the long run.

The enthusiasm for student-facing analytics as tools for supporting student self-regulation is overshadowed by uncertainties about their actual impact on student outcomes. This study aims to fill the gap in experimental evidence concerning student-facing analytics by implementing a randomized control trial. Specifically, we investigated the effects of data visualizations that display student level of content mastery in comparison to their peers, alongside recommendations for learning strategies. The preliminary results reveal that the intervention impacts student attribution and motivation in varying ways, based on their self-evaluation of their current course performance. Further analysis, including coding students' interpretation of the data visualization, will be conducted to uncover the diverse ways students might interpret the analytics.