A Qualitative Examination of Undergraduate CS Students' Self-Regulated Learning
Self-regulated learning (SRL) is an instrumental skill for success in learning computer science (CS) and software engineering. SRL is an active process where students engage in cycles of planning, strategy-use, monitoring and control, and adaptation to accomplish goals. There have been calls to investigate whether SRL theory and measurement need to be made more specific to the CS education context and to integrate SRL theory when interpreting observations of student behavior in computing education research. In this work we examine the self-regulatory behavior of CS students in a 200-level CS course with an emphasis on software engineering. We performed a think-aloud study with thirty-three students working on their programming projects. Researchers then coded the think aloud data using a theory-driven codebook aligning with Winne and Hadwin's COPES model of SRL. Using the coded data we performed a thematic analysis of two codes to better understand how students monitor their understanding of the task and set goals. Our results revealed a more complex picture than prior work of how students monitor their understanding of the task and set subgoals. We discuss the implications of our results for CS instruction and intervention designs to promote more effective SRL and learning.