Online courses are particularly attractive in adult education as they offer a high degree of autonomy and flexibility, which is made possible by self-directed formats.
Despite the attractiveness of online courses, studies show that self-regulated learning can be a challenge for adults. Most adults who study are in full-time employment and attend further education courses alongside other work and personal commitments. Investigating self-regulated learning in the context of adult continuing education therefore seems particularly important. Katharina Teich investigates (a) how adults self-regulate their learning in online continuing education courses and (b) how they can be adaptively supported in doing so. In particular, Katharina Teich is building on earlier work from the WILLEN research project. The aim is to extend current SRL models, which were mostly developed from the perspective of school-based learning, so that they also capture specific characteristics of adults’ self-regulated learning in online continuing education courses and also develop effective adaptive support for such courses.