Abstract:

Distance learning is a format introduced with the emergence of the Internet environment and is considered to be a recent development in the sphere of education. The new opportunities provided by distance learning do not imply making qualitative changes to the higher education curriculum, which is aimed at creating a competitive specialist in the labor market. At the same time, distance learning involves a radically new approach, in which students take responsibility for their learning process. While studying distantly students are assigned a great moral burden to independently solve some issues related to the choice of strategies aimed at efficient training. We consider metacognitive self-regulation to be a primary prerequisite for students’ academic success. It identifies a modern highly qualified specialist able to adjust the knowledge to any unconventional problem.

The main objectives of the article are:
- to describe the nature of metacognition regulation;
- to conduct the experiment on the impact of distance learning on student’s metacognitive regulation in the process of studying a foreign language at a university;
- to analyse the results of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ Questionnaire).

The research sample consisted of four first-year students' academic groups (N 86) from Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. To analyse the impact of distance learning on student’s metacognitive self-regulation, we used a scale “Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies: Metacognitive Self-Regulation” of the MSLQ Questionnaire. The T-test revealed a statistically significant difference between the values Mean 1 (after a semester of on-campus teaching) and Mean 2 (after a semester of online teaching).

The results demonstrate that the participants of the study became more aware of the strategies they use, improved their self-study skills, and the ability to plan and organize the learning process. We can conclude that, in most cases, distance learning had a positive effect on the way students planned and evaluated their educational activities.

Keywords:

Metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive (metacognition) self-regulation, metacognitive strategies, distance learning, higher education, teaching foreign language.