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Abstract
Online education has been firmly established as a recognized instructional delivery format. From its inception, the participation in online courses has continued to grow exponentially as many brick and mortar higher educational institutions have expanded their online programs. As students are autonomous and independent learners within these environments, it is important to investigate their motivation and self-regulation as these variables affect their academic success. Substantial research has demonstrated self-efficacy and academic success are related, but less is known about the role of self-regulation in relation to self-efficacy and academic outcomes in online classrooms. This study explored how self-efficacy and self-regulation impact academic outcome in fully online courses. Subjects were 563 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in asynchronous online classes at the University of Georgia. Students responded to surveys on motivational beliefs, self-efficacy and metacognitive self-regulation subscales via the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and an additional survey that probed for task value and self-efficacy in an online environment. Academic outcome was measured by the students’ final end of course grades. Contrary to expectations, results indicated none of the demographic or subscale measures significantly correlated to academic outcome. Thus, the proposed mediation model of self-efficacy leading to self-regulation, which then impacts academic outcome was not able to be performed due to lack of fit. The study included high achieving students and a narrow margin of academic outcomes, which made teasing out self-efficacy and self-regulation effects amongst the sample difficult. While self-regulation has been identified as an important factor in student success in online courses throughout the literature, the findings of this study reflect a weak relationship between self-regulation learning and academic outcome in a sample of high achievers.