Abstract:

All students develop, over their life, learning strategies by which they attempt to successfully overcome their educational challenges. When students reach higher levels of education should be modified and improved their learning strategies. They must move from initial strategies, which in most cases are completely inactivated to other proactive, because in the higher education levels, students are primarily responsible for their own learning and therefore must develop self-learning strategies.

The teacher should use methodologies that favor the acquisition of knowledge and develop attitudes and skills of students during the teaching-learning process. Still, the ultimate responsibility of learning depends on students themselves, who must implement their own strategies for self-learning.

The traditional teaching-learning methodologies are being modified by the Information Technology and Communication. ICT made accessible to those involved in the teaching-learning process a lot of resources. Many of the resources available are designed to enhance the learning process of students, to motivate and enable them to make decisions about what to learn, when to learn and how to learn.

When the teacher decides to implement blended learning methodology, which basically consists of designing and combine face sessions and non-face sessions for the development of the teaching-learning process, the student must adapt to this new learning environment, in which normally acquires greater levels of autonomy and responsibility.

This study aims to analyze the influence of b-learning environment on self-learning strategies that students develop during the course (note that is a decision that is imposed on the student by the teacher). There have taken into account other variables involved in the process, such as students' academic motivation and their attitude towards the b-learning methodology.

It tests a model where the attitude towards blended learning methodology, the student's academic motivation and the blended learning methodology are antecedent factors to self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies employed by students.

The study was carried out with students in a Spanish public university. Students who have participated in the study had previously completed at least three different subjects in which they had used the b-learning methodology. Their participation was voluntary. Students answered a self-administered questionnaire. All scales used in the questionnaire, were taken from the literature on education, also have been previously validated by an exploratory study conducted for this purpose.

The results obtained show that the variables used in this study are relevant. The attitudes towards blended learning are significantly related to academic motivation, blended learning methodology and the use of SRL strategies. And both, the academic motivation and blended learning methodology are also significantly related with the use of SRL strategies.

The results have an important relevance to understand how self-regulated learning strategies and blended learning environments can help to improve outcomes for higher education. In this way, teachers can improve the students' SRL strategies.

Keywords:

Blended Learning, b-learning, Self-Regulated Learning, SRL, Attitude, Academic Motivation, Higher Education.