Beyond grades in online learning: Adaptive profiles of academic self-regulation among naval academy undergraduates

For years, educational psychologists have known that students who are motivated to learn tend to experience greater academic success than their unmotivated counterparts (Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2008). One reason motivated students succeed is that they are prone to use various cognitive and metacognitive strate-gies that help make learning more efficient and effective (Flavell, 1979). Simply stated, most academically successful students are highly motivated, self-regulated learners (Pintrich, 2003). Unfortunately, not all students are highly motivated, self-regulated learners. Many students do not feel competent enough to master what is being taught or fail to see the value of what they are learning (Pintrich, 1999); some are too bored, angry, or anxious to ever become academically engaged (Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002); and others do not know how or simply fail to use effective learning strategies (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). Students like these may struggle in traditional classrooms, but when faced with learning online, they may be even more disad-vantaged. This conjecture is based, in part, on the highly autono-mous nature of learning online, where “students must exercise