Beyond self-regulated learning: a multi-dimensional framework of students’ regulation of learning during collaborative open-ended problem solving

Engineering students increasingly engage in collaborative open-ended problem solving, which involves navigating uncertainty and ambiguity, and which sometimes triggers emotional responses. Existing models of self-regulated learning offer limited explanatory power for such contexts because they under-theorise regulation through collaborative scaffolding, prioritise cognitive regulation over emotional and behavioural regulation, and conflate objects and mechanisms of regulation. This paper introduces a multi-dimensional framework of students’ regulation of learning that integrates four types of regulation – self-regulated learning, co-regulated learning, socially shared regulation of learning, and a newly proposed form, shared co-regulated learning – with three dimensions of regulation (cognitive, emotional, behavioral) at two levels. We illustrate the framework using empirical data (interviews and video-recorded group work) from two studies of engineering students in Sweden and the United States. We conclude that the framework can support research and educational design aimed at developing students’ capacity to collaboratively navigate complexity and uncertainty in engineering education.