FUTURE RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES

Having established an empirical evidence for the positive effects of the WBT in one particular sample, several open questions remain: Which elements could be improved or supplemented in order to further improve the intervention? What are the long-term outcomes of the WBT? Can the WBT successfully be applied to other target groups? Which parts of the WBT contribute to the positive effects? Do all participants profit from the WBT to a similar extent and if not, what are the predictors of training success?

There are a number of aspects where existing elements of the WBT could be improved or even new elements could be added. First of all, there was no detectable effects of the WBT on the subscales self-motivation, volition, cognitive learning strategies, and reflection. Improvements should therefore tackle the corresponding chapters of the WBT. Applying additional peer feedback seemed to help but at least the chapter on cognitive learning strategies remained unsatisfactory.

A promising combination would be supplementing the learning assistant PeerLA to the existing WBT. In order to make full use of the potential, a chapter on how to use the learning assistant— with an emphasis on the benefits expected—should be added to the first lesson of the WBT, along with occasional references in later chapters (e.g., on reflection).

In scenarios where face-to-face interaction is possible, a blended learning approach seems to be reasonable. This way, the benefits of web-based instruction (e.g., participants can adjust the speed of instruction to their personal needs) and classroom instruction (e.g., greater feeling of belonging to the group of participants through the sharing of personal experiences in group discussions) might add up to even more substantial effects.

As peer feedback groups proved effective, a new research question arises: How should group formation be implemented? The choice of group members can influence motivation, engagement, and performance (Price, Harrison, Gavin, & Florey, 2002). Research has identified several criteria of group composition that are important for group formation: For example, the values for group members’ conscientiousness should be distributed homogeneously whereas heterogeneous distributions of extraversion seem to be beneficial (Bell, 2007). In an interdisciplinary project, a software was developed that allows teachers to optimize group formation on the basis of a diagnostic test (Konert, Bellhäuser, Röpke, Gallwas, & Zucik, 2016). It seems worthwhile to investigate the potential of optimizing group formation in the context of the peer feedback intervention described in the present work.

As all studies presented in this thesis only had durations of four weeks (due to the scenario in which the research was conducted), information on long-term outcomes is largely missing. It

observable in follow-up measurements. In addition, effects on academic achievements (e.g., better course grades) should be evaluated. Here, the idea of the focus score from study 2 could be applied again: As SRL strategies help prioritizing personal goals, positive effects of the WBT might potentially be seen in particular for those courses that participants chose as personal goals, whereas mean achievement over all academic courses might be less increased. With improved self-efficacy and performance, it further seems possible that retention rates could be improved through large-scale application of the WBT (i.e., lower dropout from university). Participants in the present work were recruited from STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), therefore empirical evidence is needed that the WBT exhibits positive effects also on different target groups. However, as other SRL interventions (e.g., face- to-face trainings) have successfully been applied in a variety of academic fields and also age groups (for a review, see Benz, 2010) there is little reason to believe that this would not hold true for the WBT presented here. First positive indications have been found for students in teacher training (Butz et al., 2016).

As described above, the WBT—being based on the process model of SRL (Schmitz & Wiese, 2006)—included a great variety of strategies proposed to participants. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to decide which elements of the WBT contributed to the overall effects. Note that the same is true for previously conducted studies with face-to-face trainings (e.g., Perels, Merget-Kullmann, Wende, Schmitz, & Buchbinder, 2009; Schmitz & Wiese, 2006). Separating the different components of SRL from each other would hence be fruitful also for advancing theoretical understanding of the components of SRL and their intertwining. Future study designs should therefore incorporate either leaving out parts of the WBT (for testing the respective effects of each part) or changing the order of presentation (for testing sequential effects).

With sample sizes of less than 50 participants in the WBT condition, it was not possible to investigate interindividual differences in intervention effects of the WBT. Nevertheless, it was observable that participants differed in the extent to which they experienced beneficial effects of the WBT. Future studies should hence incorporate larger samples in order to investigate the predictors of intervention success. Possible predictors include: Prior declarative SRL knowledge (participants with more prior knowledge might not learn learn many strategies new to them in the WBT), SRL competency (attending a WBT without external regulation through a teacher might premise a certain level of SRL competency), conscientiousness (working through all materials of the WBT might need at least a moderate level of conscientiousness), openness to new experience (as the instruction mode of a WBT is new to many participants it might be necessary to have a positive attitude towards new experiences), computer literacy (although the

in the use of computers might still have an advantage), change willingness (participants that do not see the need to change their learning behavior might not be susceptible), and age (with growing age, learning strategies might become more rigid, leaving less potential for modification).

Once strong empirical evidence on the predictors of training effects is established, it would be possible to provide individual training variants, following an aptitude-treatment-interaction approach (Hooper, Wakely, de Kruif, & Swartz, 2006). Based on a diagnostic test, participants could be presented a version of the WBT optimized for individual needs, accompanied by individual feedback. This way, duration of the training could be shortened, while simultaneously providing deeper instruction matching personal requirements.