Measuring and Promoting Self-Regulation for Equity and Quality of Online Learning: New Evidence from a Multi-Institutional Survey during COVID-19
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The main contribution of the paper is the development and testing of the UOSL questionnaire. The authors were able to show that the the instrument is reliable and valid.
The second contribution were the findings from the nearly 65,000 participating students. This large sample enabled the authors to draw practical conclusions about the subgroups that exhibited low self-regulation and might therefore need more guidance and scaffolding from their teachers.
I have two main concerns that first need to be addressed:
First, the connection with the theme of the special issue is not explicit. How does this instrument and how do the practical findings promote equity and enhance quality? The authors need to make a stronger connection between the work and the special issue's theme.
Second, the authors do not discuss similar surveys nor do they mention related work on self-regulation among students in China. Section 2. Context provides some interesting general demographics that acquaints us with the population, but it does not tell us much about how self-regulated this population is.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper constitutes a useful contribution to knowledge on self-regulation and skill mastery among students across several higher education institutions in a major city in China, through a survey completed by almost 65,000 students. However, although the article has merit, there are several changes that I would like to suggest are needed before the article is ready for publication.
The context provided is useful. However, there is not enough literature overview on online learning and SRL, apart from a brief coverage in the introduction. A deeper engagement with the literature/more explicit conceptual framework would be much appreciated. This would help justify the design of the UOSL.
The materials and methods are described well overall and appear to be appropriate. It would be interesting to know the survey response rate if this is available. Also, Table 1 shows the demographics of the respondents. Is this representative of the total population that the survey was sent to?
It is stated that respondents who submitted their surveys in too long or short a time were excluded – why was this, if the surveys were fully completed?
More about the items in the survey is needed – the constructs could be better explained in the literature review/overview.
Also, I assume the UOSL items shown in Table 1 have been translated to English for this paper from Mandarin or Cantonese? If so, there may have been something lost in translation. The word ‘more’ is used in the survey as is ‘better’ – but more than what? Better than what? Is there an introductory sentence in the survey that is missing here that asks the students to compare online with face to face?
There is no mention of ethics or consent. Please provide some information about this.
Discussion – this could be improved by a more meaningful discussion around each of the elements of SRL, linking back to the literature review (which needs bolstering). It could also be mentioned that there may be different designs of online learning in the courses that the students were exposed to, influencing their opportunities to self-regulate. For example, some students may not have much scope for goal setting in a tightly structured course where tight goals are set out by the instructor. This is an area for further investigation.
An interesting finding was the SRL of students at 'elite' institutions. Perhaps these students had higher expectations of themselves, or the institutions had higher expectations of them thus leading to the lower self-ratings? This demographic could be investigated further.
All the best for a successful revision of this paper.
Minor typos and areas for clarification:
Abstract – check the wording/grammar
P1 line 5: “The outbreak of COVID-19 provides a large scale setting” – perhaps better to say “The outbreak of COVID-19 resulted in large numbers of courses being shifted online, thus providing a large-scale setting …”
P1 lines 14-17 – meaning not clear to the reader so consider a few words to consider rewording the two sentences about the subgroups.
P1 line 21 insert “the” between During and past.
P1 line 27 – which myths? Give some examples of the myths being referred to.
P1 line 38 – may be an overgeneralisation i.e. that learners online have more autonomy and less guidance from instructors.
P2 line 52 “To research the complex in research implementation” – unclear.
P2 line 66 “To closing this gap” should be “To close this gap”
P2 line 73 – why do we need to know that the city has a smaller population than Korea but larger than Niger or SL? This does not seem to be relevant.
P2 line 78 – GDP given but it is not indicated whether this is high or low.
P2 line 88 – say male and female instead of girls and boys – they are adolescents and adults so not girls and boys.
P5 Hypothesis 1 – should be SRL Is “positively” associated.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
