How College Students’ Achievement Goal Orientations Predict Their Expected Online Learning Outcome: The Mediation Roles of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies and Supportive Online Learning Behaviors

The purpose of this study was to examine the underlying mechanism between goal orientations and academic expectation for online learners. We simultaneously studied the structural relationships among 2×2 achievement goal orientations, self-regulated learning strategies (SRL), supportive online learning behaviors, and expected academic outcome in various online courses with 93 respondents (70 undergraduate and 23 graduate students). Specifically, we tested the mediation effects of both self-regulated learning strategies and supportive online learning behaviors on the relation between achievement goal orientations and students’ academic expectations. The results showed that two of the achievement goal orientations – mastery-approach goals (MAP) and mastery-avoidance goals (MAV) – predicted the adoption of the self-regulated learning strategies and supportive online learning behaviors, which, in turn, predicted students’ expected academic outcome for their online course. Specifically, students with higher mastery-approach goals were more likely to adopt different types of self-regulated learning strategies and supportive online learning behaviors to facilitate their learning experience, which further enhanced their expectation for their academic outcome. By contrast, students with higher mastery-avoidance goals were less likely to adopt self-regulated learning strategies and supportive online learning behaviors, which, in turn, led to lower grade expectations.