Digital Literacy and Self-Regulated Learning: Testing Reciprocal Relationships with Longitudinal Data

Personal learning environments (PLEs) are disrupting contemporary education, offering opportunities for enhanced use of technology for learning. To maximize these opportunities it is imperative to understand how learners’ technological fluency and self-regulated learning skills are interrelated within PLEs. This paper presents the quantitative findings of an ongoing longitudinal mixed methods study to identify and describe these relationships between digital literacy and self-regulated learning skills. Structural equation modeling is used to test competing models using online survey data from 181 participants in a two-wave panel design. The results support the acceptance of a non-recursive model with significant positive reciprocal relationships between digital literacy component constructs and the self-regulated learning construct. We contribute via empirical evidence, to clarifying the direction and extent to which digital literacy and self-regulated learning skills of undergraduates influence each other. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for theory and practice together with future research opportunities.

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