While it seems that we are observing a gradual paradigm shift in education, from a teacher-oriented approach to a learner-oriented approach, this is probably more the case for teaching and learning processes at university level than for those processes in primary and secondary education. In general, universities require there students to be more autonomous in their learning activities and provide them with more freedom for exercising these. Information and Communication Technologies have a great potential to foster autonomous learning and to help students to personalise their learning environments.

The topic of self-regulated learning has become more and more important in the last three decades in European higher education institutions, and technological developments have played a major role in helping to design and implement environments that have the potential to actually support the acquisition and improvement of self-regulated learning (Steffens, 2006). A major advantage of technology enhanced learning environments (TELEs) is that they can individualise learning processes to an extent that is impossible to achieve in a traditional classroom. Not only do they allow students to personalise their learning environments, they also give them more freedom to decide when and where to learn, and they are able to provide students with feedback quickly and on time to a much better degree than a teacher can in a traditional school setting. Finally, TELEs allow students to directly communicate with each other and the teacher thus giving them the opportunity to establish communities of practice.

Adriana Gwerc Barujel and Ana Rodríguez from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain studied motivational aspects of self-regulated learning in university students who were participating in an academic network. Motivational aspects of SL were then related to students’ social activities and their standing in the network.

Fotini Paraskeva and her colleagues from the University of Piraeus in Greece report on a study they did on the development of an online course on research methodology for university students. The course was to be delivered in an adaptable ICT-based learning environment which had the option to be customized to students’ learning styles in order to support collaboration and self-regulated learning.

In his contribution,  João Paz from the Instituto Piaget in Portugal proposes a constructivist approach to the topic of self-regulated learning in communities of inquiry. In this context, the question is whether learning is purely self-regulated or also, at least to some extent, socially regulated.

Finally, Karl Steffens from the University of Cologne in Germany addresses the problem of learning in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs are presently receiving a great deal of public attention, but it is unclear to what extent they are based on theories of learning and to what extent they support or require self-regulation competences. In his contribution, criteria will be proposed which should be met by MOOCs in order to support learning and self-regulation of learning

Steffens, K. (2006). Self-regulated learning in technology-enhanced learning environments: lessons of a European peer review. European Journal of Education, 41 (3/4), 353-379.