Exploring Task Definition as a Facet of Self-Regulated Learning

Task definition theoretically is one of the main components of self-regulated learning because one's representation of the task directs cognitive activities such as setting goals, creating plans, and enacting those plans to create task products. To date, little research has examined students' representations of tasks or how those representations change over time. In this dissertation I characterize students' initial representations of tasks and explore factors influencing how they refine these representations over time. Fifty-eight undergraduate students taking an undergraduate instructional psychology course participated in a semester-long examination of how students constructed and refined their task understanding. The data source was a studying portfolio consisting of detailed descriptions about and reflections on strategic processes they used to complete two main writing assignments in the course: a think paper and a design project. Analyses of these data suggest students' representations of tasks varied across two dimensions: breadth and depth. In terms of breadth, students selected information from the design project description of different grain sizes. Students with greater depth not only searched and selected information from the task, but they actively assembled elements of the task and monitored how those components fit with one another. Most students set goals and created plans; however, not all goals or plans were framed in light of criteria that would theoretically foster self-regulated learning. To revise task understanding, students metacognitively monitored their processes and outcomes of learning activities, which updated information about task, cognitive, and motivational conditions. This additional information afforded students opportunity to reassess the discrepancy between the initial state and the goal state to determine next steps to reach task goals. Although students may have recognized the need to change their approaches, they often failed to engage in effective metacognitive control to adapt approaches to learning. I interpret this to indicate that control processes require not only the skill for enacting these processes but also the motivational catalyst to sustain these efforts when competing factors are present. Future research should strive to create new measures for task understanding, and to track how students' perceptions and representations of tasks influence self-regulated learning and achievement.