Studies in Higher Education

ISSN: 0307-5079 (Print) 1470-174X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cshe20

Self-regulation in open-ended online assignment

tasks: the importance of initial task interpretation
and goal setting

Karley Beckman, Tiffani Apps, Sue Bennett, Barney Dalgarno, Gregor

Kennedy & Lori Lockyer

To cite this article: Karley Beckman, Tiffani Apps, Sue Bennett, Barney Dalgarno, Gregor
Kennedy & Lori Lockyer (2019): Self-regulation in open-ended online assignment tasks: the
importance of initial task interpretation and goal setting, Studies in Higher Education, DOI:
10.1080/03075079.2019.1654450

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1654450

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STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1654450

Self-regulation in open-ended online assignment tasks: the

importance of initial task interpretation and goal setting
a
Karley Beckman , Tiffani Apps a, Sue Bennett a
, Barney Dalgarno b
,
c
Gregor Kennedy and Lori Lockyer d
a
School of Education, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia; bDivision of Learning and Teaching, Charles
Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia; cMelbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of
Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; dFaculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney,
Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
With an increase in technology to mediate learning and a shift to more Task understanding; goal
student-centred approaches, open-ended online assignment tasks are setting; self-regulated
becoming more common in higher education. Open-ended tasks offer learning; open-ended tasks;
online learning environments
opportunities for students to develop their own interpretations of the
requirements, and online technologies offer greater flexibility and afford
new types of interactions with teachers and other students. This paper
presents a study of students’ task interpretation and self-set goals in the
context of five open-ended online assignment tasks. The findings
presented in this paper demonstrate the importance of a high-quality
task understanding for goal setting and suggest practical implications
for task design and support.

Introduction
Online technologies can offer students freedom in how, when and where they engage with teachers
and other students. Open-ended online assignment tasks can also afford students flexibility. At the
same time, open-ended online assignment tasks require students to make decisions about how
they will approach the task and manage their work over a number of study sessions. These
demands potentially increase the need for students to self-regulate their learning. For example, com-
pared to face-to-face learning, online learning can present fewer direct opportunities to observe and
mediate student learning in ways that students and teachers may be accustomed (Bennett and
Lockyer 2004). Students need to interpret teacher expectations, set appropriate goals and adopt
effective strategies to complete tasks, while also engaging with online platforms that can have unfa-
miliar rules and conventions. Research suggests, for example, that students often undertake online
learning tasks in ways that differ from the teacher’s intentions, leading to poor learning processes
and outcomes (Waycott et al. 2012).
In this paper, we refer to open-ended assignment tasks that provide scope for the student to make
decisions about what and how they will learn. Open-ended assignment tasks, either individual or col-
laborative, are more student-centred, requiring students to work on a project or problem, discuss or
debate ideas or create authentic products. Students may work on assignment tasks over a number of
sessions and engage in planning the steps that need to be taken to work toward the completion of
the assignment. This involves breaking down an abstract, distal goal of ‘completing an assignment’
into smaller, more specific proximal goals that address task requirements.

CONTACT Karley Beckman karleymc@uow.edu.au School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Wollon-
gong, Northfields Ave, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
© 2019 Society for Research into Higher Education
2 K. BECKMAN ET AL.

This paper investigates students’ self-regulation while engaging with open-ended online assign-
ment tasks to understand the strategies students adopt in the initial stages of their assignment work.
The study was framed using concepts from Winne and Hadwin’s model of self-regulated learning
(SRL) (Hadwin and Winne 2012). This model outlines learners’ self-regulation as occurring over four
weakly sequenced, recursive phases: task interpretation, goal setting, study tactics, and adaptations.
This paper will focus on the first two phases to understand how students’ initial interpretations relate
to the goals they set.

Task interpretation
Task understanding is foundational to students’ engagement in a task as it ‘sets learning in motion
and establishes directions for learning’ (Butler and Cartier 2004, 1743). Students’ understanding of a
task is an interpretation of the teachers’ task design. This involves students interpreting the written
and verbal explanations of the task to form their own representation of the task and understanding of
what they need to do. Yet, academic tasks involve more than explicit instructions. The intended
purpose, knowledge of relevant resources and inferences about the thinking to be demonstrated
may be implied in a task description, with the expectation that students will be able to decipher
what is required. Contextual knowledge such as discipline-specific thinking, language, and forms
also underpin tasks. These form three layers of task understanding: explicit, implicit and socio-con-
textual (Hadwin and Winne 2012). Given this complexity, the interpretation of a task is not necessarily
uniform or fixed, but is subject to a range of task conditions including cues from teachers and peers,
and is likely to change over time as students and teachers engage with a task.
Previous research suggests that students with an accurate and more complete understanding of a
task are more likely to achieve a higher learning outcome because they have a clear standard to
evaluate their progress (Miller 2003; Oshige 2009). Conversely, students with an unclear understand-
ing lack measures with which to monitor their work. A student with an unclear understanding may be
unaware of their misinterpretation, further hampering their ability to regulate their learning and suc-
cessfully complete a task (Hadwin 2006). To date, this body of SRL research has used quantitative
methods to study controlled tasks (Greene et al. 2012), rather than tasks situated within a naturalistic
learning environment (Oshige 2009; Miller 2003). Thus, there is an opportunity to conduct qualitative
research into specific strategies students adopt in real settings to elicit further detail.

Goal setting
Interpretation of the task and task-related goal setting are inextricably linked, as goals for a task
cannot be defined without first having some understanding of the task. Therefore, self-set goals
are interpretations of the elements that constitute a task, how to approach them and the standards
of performance desired (Hadwin, Järvelä, and Miller 2011; Schunk, Pintrich, and Meece 2008). Self-set
goals are actions, products or outcomes that a student consciously and strategically applies to guide
their work. Goals are important for students’ engagement as they direct attention and engagement
with elements of the task. Reflecting on goals can help students to recognise whether their work is on
target or identify discrepancies between task understanding and the planned and actual state of goal
outcomes (Hadwin and Winne 2012).
Research in organisational behaviour and psychology demonstrate that the effectiveness of goals
depends on the specificity (how well a goal is defined), proximity (short or long term goal), and level
of difficulty (Locke and Latham 2002; Schunk and Zimmerman 2003). Four-goal properties (time,
actions, standards, and content; or TASC) lead to more effective self-regulation and improved learn-
ing outcomes (Hadwin and Winne 2012). The TASC properties support students to detect discrepan-
cies between their current activity and goal outcomes and make necessary adaptations.
The TASC properties draw on research that suggests that effective goals are hierarchical in nature,
breaking down complex, distal (long-term) goals into specific proximal (short-term) components
 STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 3

(Donovan and Williams 2003; Zimmerman 2008). Proximal goals create checkpoints to monitor pro-
gress, meaning that students’ task understanding, goals, strategies and outcomes are more likely to
be revised and adapted while working on the task, especially if goals are committed to specific time
periods or deadlines (McCardle et al. 2017). While distal goals may provide little guidance for action,
in combination with proximal goals, they provide a specific standard of performance that the student
aims to achieve. This suggests that consideration of time, including the sequencing of proximal goals
and time dedicated to working on elements of the task, may lead to high-quality self-set goals.
High-quality goals also include specific actions that focus attention on learning rather than the
outcome. An understanding of the task-specific content and relevant cognitive processes focuses stu-
dents’ attention on the actions required, providing a platform for selecting appropriate strategies (McCar-
dle et al. 2017). For example, goals that specify the planned process, such as to compare or synthesise,
lead to higher performance outcomes compared with general ‘do your best’ goals (Locke and Latham
2002). Finally, goals that include a measure of specific performance standard are more likely to be
achieved, as progress toward an explicit goal is easier to monitor and control (Schunk 2009).
These goal properties suggest that setting high-quality goals is particularly significant for tasks
that are more complex or require engagement over an extended time period, as, for example,
when a student is required to plan work independently over multiple study sessions to complete
open-ended assignment tasks. So far, there has been limited research into students’ goal setting
for open-ended assignment tasks (Greene et al. 2012; McCardle et al. 2017).
The research presented in this paper seeks to advance our understanding of how students inter-
pret and set goals in naturalistic setting, and specifically focuses on tasks which are open-ended and
involve online technologies. The findings presented are not intended to demonstrate correlations
with student outcomes or performance, but rather provide insights into how students’ interpretations
of a task can shape their goals and how the goals that students set can guide their approach.

Methods
This paper focuses on three research questions:

(1) What are the characteristics of students’ initial interpretations of an open-ended online assign-
ment task?
(2) What are the characteristics of the goals students set when working on open-ended online
assignment tasks?
(3) How do students’ task interpretations relate to the goals they set?

The data is drawn from a larger study investigating the interrelations between teaching and learn-
ing processes for open-ended online assignment tasks, focusing on students’ approaches to learning
and their self-regulated learning strategies. The research used an embedded, multiple case study
design, with each case comprising a task that met the following criteria: the task was already
designed and was being offered as part of the unit; was open-ended and so required students to
make choices about content and/or form; was supported using online technologies, either in combi-
nation with face-to-face teaching or fully online; and was a multi-week assignment that required stu-
dents to manage their time and effort.
For this paper, we drew on a sub-set of data from semi-structured interviews with students and
teaching staff. Students and teachers were interviewed twice, prior to the task, shortly after the
task had been introduced (Interview 1) and after the task (Interview 2) as outlined in Figure 1. The
student interviews focused on their conceptions of and preferred approaches to learning, their
interpretation of the task prior to and after the task, and their anticipated process and the actual
process of task completion. The teaching staff interviews provide context to students’ experiences
through understanding of the teachers’ task design, teaching plans and modifications to the task
and impressions of student understanding.
4 K. BECKMAN ET AL.

Figure 1 . Data collection for each case.

For the purposes of this analysis, we selected five tasks (including 45 students) from the larger
study in which students worked independently on a single assignment task. We excluded colla-
borative tasks and multi-component tasks, which were more varied and complex, and arguably
less comparable. Table 1 provides a brief description of each case including details of the unit
and the task.
Analysis of the student interviews began with the transcription and identification of relevant
excerpts, which were collated into rich qualitative descriptions of each student’s initial task interpret-
ations and set of goals. Relevant excerpts included contemporaneous accounts of initial task
interpretation and goals from Interview 1, and reflections on initial understandings and approaches
from Interview 2. The rich descriptions were then deductively coded using the frameworks derived
from the self-regulated learning theory described in detail below (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña,
2013). We applied each framework by first working with a sample of data to test and refine our
definitions of the categories. After this, we adopted a collaborative and iterative process of analysis,
refinement of codes (for the quality of students’ task goals, see Table 4), and recoding until we
reached consensus as a research team.

Table 1. Case summaries.

# student
Case cases Unit description Task description
A 16 Second-year history unit exploring historical Online blogging task requiring 8 posts over 10 weeks
events through film; on-campus giving a critical response to weekly topic. Students
could choose theme and materials
B 11 Second-year sociology unit focused on crime Three online journal entries over three weeks, private
and punishment; on-campus submission. Personal reflection to open-ended
questions linked to the weekly topic
C 6 First-year culture and communication unit Online blogging task requiring 8 posts over 10 weeks
exploring contemporary popular music; on- demonstrating understanding of weekly course content
campus through connections to personal experiences and
interests
D 5 Second-year business unit studying ethics Report requiring students to discuss an ethical dilemma
applied to business issues; on-campus and they had experienced in the workplace and apply
distance modes theory to assess their actions. Submitted online
E 7 First-year humanities unit exploring Online presentation on human services issue of choice to
communication in human services; online demonstrate critical reflection on own values and
approach. Uploaded for peer appraisal
 STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 5

Analysis of task interpretation

As part of this study, a taxonomy was created to determine the quality of students’ task interpret-
ations by considering the alignment between the teachers’ description of the task and the students
as an indication of accuracy. For each case, we created a teachers’ description from the initial inter-
views with the teaching staff and from the document analysis, with particular attention to the
descriptions provided by the unit coordinator who had designed the task and the official description
in the unit outline. We identified key characteristics of the task from these rich descriptions. We com-
pared each student’s task interpretation to these key characteristics and assigned it to one of the
codes outlined in Table 2.
In addition to the quality of task interpretation, we used Hadwin and Winne’s (2012) three
layers of task interpretation to identify whether students’ task interpretations included explicit,
implicit and socio-contextual task features (Table 3). Each task interpretation contained one or
more features and was then coded according to which layer(s) those features belonged to. So,
for example, if a student’s initial task interpretation contained only explicit features it was
assigned only one code, but if it contained both explicit and implicit features it was assigned
to both codes.

Analysis of goal setting

The quality of students’ initial set of goals was coded using Hadwin and Winne’s (2012) taxonomy.
Each set of goals was assigned to one of the codes in Table 4.
Goals were then coded using the four key properties of timeframe, action, standard and content
(TASC) (McCardle et al. 2017) (see Table 5). Each set of goals was assigned to one or more codes to
reflect the properties included.
After each of the task interpretations and sets of goals had been coded, we explored the texts to
identify similarities and differences in the students’ responses that could provide further insights
about the nature of each. Quotes were selected to illustrate the patterns identified. We also qualitat-
ively compared the task interpretations of students according to the quality of their goals to begin to
identify possible relationships between task interpretation and goal setting. Our purpose here was to
explore the rich qualitative data provided in the interview accounts rather than seeking to identify
correlations.

Table 2. Coding framework for the quality of students’ task interpretations.

Code Code description
Low Unclear interpretation of the task; lacked any specific detail about the task
Moderate Developing interpretation of the task including detail of some aspects of the task, but was lacking key aspects of the
task or lacking overall coherence. May also include some inaccurate interpretations of aspects of the task
High Well-developed interpretation of the task included all key aspects of the task or an accurate understanding of the
overall purpose of the task without explicit mention of all aspects

Table 3. Layers of students’ task interpretation (Hadwin and Winne 2012, 206).
Code Code description
Explicit Explicit task features refer to the overt aspects of the task including those explicitly outlined in the assignment
task descriptions and criteria or verbal descriptions provided by teachers. These include features such as
assignment genre, length, content and task procedures
Implicit Implicit task features are inferred by the student and influenced by internal and external conditions. These
include the assignment task purpose, alignment of the task with other assignments and unit learning
outcomes, strategies and timings
Socio- Socio-contextual task features are not specifically task related, but rather inferred/learned beliefs or conventions
contextual of the discipline or broader programme of study in which the assignment is situated, including features such as
disciplinary genres and conventions
6 K. BECKMAN ET AL.

Table 4. Quality of students’ task goals (Hadwin and Winne 2012, 209).
Code Code description
Weak These goals identified a target but lacked substance. None of the TASC properties
Basic These goals identified one TASC property relevant to the completion of the task, such as a single specific goal or activity.
These goals usually referred to practical aspects of the task, including a specific activity to complete or subject content to
refer to
Good These goals included two TASC properties relevant to the completion of the task; often lists of planned activities or
plans to engage with specific unit content
Excellent These goals included three TASC properties relevant to the completion of the task; usually included specific and
realistic detail of what/how the student planned to complete the task in combination with a goal for the standard of
work
Exemplar These goals identified all TASC properties relevant to the completion of the task; included specific and realistic detail of
what and how the student planned to complete the task in combination with a goal for the standard of work
Note: An additional category of students’ task goals emerged from the data analysis, indicated above in italics. These ‘basic’ goals
included more detail than Hadwin and Winne’s (2012) weak goal by identifying one relevant goal related to the task.

Table 5. Properties of students’ task goals (McCardle et al. 2017, 2155).

Category Code description
Time Reference to a specific day or time (on Sunday, after class), or a timeframe (by the end of the week)
Action Description of specific actions or learning processes in which to conduct. For example, to make notes, read, research,
summarise, analyse, etc.
Standard Description of the standard with which the student can evaluate the completion or quality of their work. For example,
to read until I deeply understand the content, to be able to participate in discussions of the unit content, or to use the
marking rubric to review assignment before submission
Content Reference to specific unit materials (for example, readings, lecture or tutorial content) or reference to specific topics/
concepts from the unit

Results
This section presents a summary of the results, however, the coding for each participant can be found
in Appendix (Table A1).

Task interpretation
Table 6 presents an overview of the results of the analysis of the quality of students’ task interpret-
ations with example quotes for each category.
In the initial stages of the task, 13 of the 45 students demonstrated a high-quality understanding
of the task, either by including all key features of the task or demonstrating a coherent understanding
of its overall purpose. The remainder demonstrated gaps in their understandings, with either incom-
plete understandings or revealing inaccuracies in their descriptions.

Table 6. Quality of students’ initial task interpretations (n = 45).

# students
Quality (%) Examples
Low 5 (11) - ‘I think it’s interesting. I’ve never done anything like that you’ve had to do something each week and
it wasn’t very clear at the start of our like what you were meant to be doing like how many
words’. (CStu08)

Moderate 27 (60) - ‘It was basically to research, like a specific topic that would be present in like social type work … I
think it’s about 12 slides or something. You have to actually also talk about like value
statements, … learning theories and talk about like adult communication and that sort of stuff
as well’. (EStu03)

High 13 (29) - ‘Write a report based on an ethical dilemma that I’ve faced and explain what the dilemma was. It’s
then also going through and applying it to the ethical theories that we’ve learned so far’.
(DStu02)
 STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 7

Table 7. Layers present in initial task interpretations.

Layer Number of task interpretations that described each layer
Explicit 42
Implicit 8
Socio-contextual 2

Table 7 summarises which layers were present in students’ initial task interpretations. Most of the
students’ initial task interpretations (38 of the 45) included features at only one layer of task interpret-
ation, with seven students identifying features at multiple layers (see Appendix (Table A1)).
Explicit features of the task were the most readily identified, with 42 of the 45 students’ initial task
descriptions identifying this layer. Students described explicit features such as word count (‘it’s a 300-
word limit’, AStu07); timing of submissions (‘after the first tutorial, [the teacher] said that the ques-
tions are kind of on a weekly basis so the first questions to do in Week 1, the second question’s to
do Week 2’, BStu03); genre (‘it’s less formal than an essay writing task’, CStu12); task procedures
(‘applying theory and the issues with the theory’, DStu04); and content, referring to unit materials
or topics.
Task interpretations identifying implicit or socio-contextual features were significantly less
common. Eight students described the intended purpose of the assignment task, an implicit
feature. For example, ‘[The task is] more of a personal reflection and isn’t as academic so [the
tutor] wants to know that you are initiating your own thoughts and thinking about it critically’
(AStu11). Two students described socio-contextual features of the blogging genre and their disci-
pline. One student, for example, described the influence of past experience with this type of task,
‘I’ve done similar blogging tasks through the LMS with other [units] so I think my impression is prob-
ably quite affected by having done it before for those [units]’ (CStu04).
Table 8 shows the breakdown of the layers present in students’ task interpretations according to
the quality of their task interpretation.
This shows that students who identified task features at multiple layers also tended to have higher
quality task interpretations, suggesting these two measures of task interpretation are related.
Further qualitative analysis showed that students with a higher quality initial task interpretation
were also clearer in their descriptions of the explicit task features. For example, one student with a
low-quality understanding was vague about the task, ‘it wasn’t very clear at the start [of the unit],
what you were meant to be doing, like, how many words’ (CStu08). While a student with a high-
quality task understanding described all explicit features of a blogging task as requiring students
to ‘[analyse] the readings and the movie and the larger theme in which the movie has been kind
of positioned by the [unit] coordinator and … basically tie the threads together’ (AStu15). This
student was able to bring the explicit task features together to articulate a more coherent description
of the task.
Taken together these results suggest that students with a poorer understanding of the task in the
initial stages demonstrated interpretations that were less complete, tended to be focused on explicit
features only and were often unclear about these. Those with better understandings of the task
demonstrated more accurate and complete interpretations, and were clearer and more comprehen-
sive about the explicit features. Those who identified implicit and socio-contextual features of the
task tended to demonstrate higher quality task interpretations, but the reverse was not always true.

Table 8. Student initial task interpretation quality and layers.

Quality of task interpretation (n = Layer of task interpretation
45) Explicit Implicit Socio-contextual
Low 5 5 0 0
Moderate 27 25 2 1
High 13 12 6 1
Total 42 8 2
8 K. BECKMAN ET AL.

Table 9. Students’ goal quality taxonomy.

Goal # students
quality (%) Examples
Weak 3 (6.7) - ‘I’d like to start it by the end of this week probably because I don’t want to be … I’m trying to break
my bad habit of leaving stuff to the last minute’ (BStu05)

Basic 7 (15.5) - ‘I’ve done the introduction and sort of described the theory and described my dilemma, so it’s
really filling out that body of the report’. (DStu04)

Good 24 (53.3) - ‘I do the readings first, do the blog on Friday or Saturday because I’ll know the text … . every week
is the same – you do the readings for that week and then you follow the prompt and make the
post’. (CStu01)

Excellent 10 (22.2) - ‘I’ll probably break it down into … the introduction into some sub-headings as well to explain what
the dilemma was, how I handled it, what theory I can relate it to and then what my outcomes
were and what I learned from it. I’ll probably go back and review [the marking rubric] before I
start really getting in and typing my report up’. (DStu02)

Exemplar 1 (2.22) - ‘The order is there, the contents are there; it’s a matter of now putting each slide together and
making sure that I’m going back to what [the unit coordinator’s] expecting and making those
links between what she would like us to have in the presentation … then as I’m going back
into finishing module 3, if there’s things that seems relevant, I’ll change a slide or I’ll add
something’. (EStu05)

Goal setting
Students described sets of goals that ranged from one or two specific goals to a more extensive and
descriptive list of goals. Hadwin and Winne’s (2012) original taxonomy, described in Table 4, did not
include goals focusing on only a single goal property. These were found in our study and so we
included an additional level of ‘basic’ in our analysis. Table 9 presents the proportion of students’
goals set coded according to goal quality with examples from each category (refer to Table 4 for a
description of each goal quality).
The following section of the findings presents detailed descriptions of students’ goals accord-
ing to each goal quality category. A breakdown of the properties present by goal quality is sum-
marised in Table 10. Each section also includes a summary of students’ task understandings (low,
moderate or high, outlined in Table 6) to explore how task interpretation may be related to goal
setting.

Weak goals (3)

Three students were unable to state specific goals. They were engaged in weekly blogging and
journaling assignment tasks they described as requiring little planning, ‘There wasn’t much plan-
ning or anything … because it’s just the journal, you could just pretty much go through and do it’
(BStu05).

Table 10. Goal properties described according to goal quality category.

Goal properties
Goal quality Time Action Standards Content
Weak 3 0 0 0 0
Basic 7 0 5 0 2
Good 24 8 18 7 15
Excellent 10 4 10 8 8
Exemplar 1 1 1 1 1
Total 45 13 34 16 26
 STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 9

The students who described weak goals did not provide a clear description of the task. Two
described some explicit task features but did not adequately explain what they were required to
do. For example, ‘[The unit coordinator] doesn’t want us to obviously reiterate the whole [reading]
because he knows what’s there, so pulling it apart and that’s pretty much it. It’s a 300-word limit’
(AStu07).

Basic goals (7)

Basic goals usually referred to practical aspects of the task, including a specific action or unit content
to refer to. None described goals relating to time or standards.
Action (5) • Develop a structure/format
• Follow an established routine/structure
• Revise task requirements: ‘I’m going to definitely have to go back over … and read exactly what she wants again
and put that in order so that I know that I’m doing each page correctly’ (EStu09)
Content • Engage with general content related to the task: ‘to watch the required documentation as well as to investigate the
(2) suggested readings’ (AStu16)

Five of the seven students provided a moderate level task interpretation. The two remaining stu-
dents were unable to provide a clear description of the task. Basic goals focused on the explicit
content, requirements or procedures but were incomplete, omitting some key aspects of the assign-
ment task. Basic goals were proximal, demonstrating little evidence of longer-term plans or methods
to monitor the effectiveness of the goals.

Good goals (24)

Just over half of the students in this study identified two specific goal properties. Most good goals
related to actions or content, with a smaller number describing goals relating to the timing or
standards.
Actions (16) • Follow a developed or established structure
• Complete a list of specific actions (e.g. make notes, answer questions, write components, re-structure or review
previous writing, submit task): ‘I still need to write dot points on the second week and I still haven’t read the third
week so reading that one will probably be … and then once I’ve kind of put them altogether then edit it and such
before I submit it’ (BStu06)
Content • Refer to specific unit concepts or various unit related topics: ‘I have to do the learning theories and the adult
(15) communication’ (EStu03)
• General reference to unit materials including readings and films
Timing (8) • Develop a routine for completing blog/journal entries: ‘For this week, I’ll probably read tonight and then go to the
tutorial and then take my notes and stuff and then do the journal for that before Friday’ (BStu11)
• Time management strategies: ‘I figured if I’d done it at the end of the week while it was still fresh in my brain, I
wouldn’t forget what we had talked about’ (BStu09)
Standard (7) • Monitor progress or revise work based on task requirements
• Review work before submission, revising the content and structure: ‘[I’ll] go back and read it all again and just read
the instructions again just to make sure … you know, what they’re looking for … in the outcomes’ (BStu07)
• View other students’ work online to evaluate whether their work aligned with that of others: ‘I’ll probably read
what other people wrote before so I can like sort of know what [the marker] is actually looking for. If I read other
people’s blog posts first and then rewrite my own blog post’ (CStu05)

Good goals were mostly specific proximal or short-term goals students planned to complete
when they next worked on the task (e.g. ‘to write dot points on the second week’). Longer-term
goals were often not specific to the task and lacked detail (e.g. ‘put them all together’).
Students who described good goals provided moderate (18) or high-quality (6) task interpret-
ations. Students with a moderate understanding outlined explicit task features and two described
implicit features. Students with a high-quality task understandings outlined all explicit task features
and two identified both explicit and implicit layers of understanding.
10 K. BECKMAN ET AL.

Excellent goals (10)

Excellent goals usually included specific and realistic detail of what/how the student planned to com-
plete the task in combination with a goal for the standard of work.
Actions (10) • List of actions to complete, ranging from immediate tasks through to more distal goals (including planning, select
materials, making notes, conducting research, writing, analysing, synthesising ideas, editing, viewing other
students’ work, revising their work, reviewing the assignment description or criteria, and submission)
• Include specific, task-related detail of their planned activities rather than generic action descriptions
• Higher-order cognitive: ‘synthesise the elements together’ (AStu15) and ‘figure out what the limitations are’
(EStu01)
Content (8) • Cover a range of unit-specific concepts or materials including films, readings, discussions, marking rubrics and
tutorial resources, plus own research
Standard • Aim to achieve a high or improved standard of work
(8) • Range of strategies to evaluate their work including using the assessment criteria, unit content, marking rubrics
and comparisons with other students’ work: ‘before I submit any of it in Week 4 I will just comb through it all and
make sure it makes sense and addresses the questions’ (BStu02)
Timing (4) • Follow a routine aligned with the weekly submissions of the task
• Dedicate more time to working on the task
• Improve reading selection by taking more time to view and consider all the unit readings: ‘I’ll definitely be sort of
spending a bit more time with the readings … if I’m feeling really rushed about it then I’ll go for something that
might not be the best reading to look at for that week but it’s the easiest to be accessed’ (AStu13)

Students who described excellent goals provided moderate (4) or high (6) quality interpretations
of the assignment task. Nine students outlined explicit task features, with five of these students
describing all key explicit features of the task. Four students with a high-quality task understanding
described implicit task features with one student also applying their knowledge of a similar task in
another unit to their understanding of this task (socio-contextual feature).

Exemplar goals (1)

One student (EStu05) described goals that outlined specific detail of the actions they would take,
content to be covered, when they would work on these tasks and how they would evaluate the stan-
dard of work. At the time of the initial interview, the student had completed a draft of the content and
structure of the presentation according to the assigned proforma. They identified the timing of when
they planned to complete their work, ‘well in advance’ of the assigned submission date. The actions
required to complete their work included a number of tasks from more immediate actions (putting
each slide together) to more distal goals of reviewing, refining and submission. They also referred to
the relevant unit content, and the standard of work they aimed to achieve. They described using the
assignment criteria to guide their planning of an online presentation and planned to revise the
content based on the upcoming unit content before submission. This student demonstrated a
high-quality task interpretation and identified all of the explicit features of the task, providing
detail about each in their explanation of the task.

Discussion
This paper explored students’ task interpretation and goal setting within open-ended online assign-
ment tasks completed over multiple study sessions. The findings of this study demonstrate that the
interpretation of the open-ended online assignment tasks was challenging for many of the students.
Those students with a more developed understanding of the task were more likely to articulate
specific goals to guide their engagement with the task.
Fewer than one-third of students (13 of 45) demonstrated a high-quality initial understanding of
the task, with the remainder showing their understandings to be inaccurate and/or incomplete to
some degree. Further analysis showed that students focused mainly on the explicit features of the
tasks, with only 8 of the 45 students identifying implicit or socio-contextual features. There is
some suggestion in the data that higher-quality task understanding is associated with going
beyond identifying only explicit features. But high-quality task understanding was also demonstrated
 STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 11

by students who showed a comprehensive, detailed description of the explicit features. One way to
interpret these findings is that identifying implicit or socio-contextual task features can help in
forming a high-quality task understanding, but that being able to bring together explicit features
into a coherent interpretation of the task is also effective.
Previous research has highlighted the difficulties students can have when interpreting both well
and less structured academic tasks (Apps et al. 2019; Butler and Cartier 2004; Oshige 2009; Rivera-
Reyes, Lawanto, and Pate 2017), so it is not surprising that students found it challenging to
develop their understanding of these open-ended tasks. We could speculate that the open-ended-
ness encouraged a focus on explicit features that could be most readily identifiable. The purpose
of the task may have been less clear because of the freedom offered to students to make some of
their own decisions about how they would approach the tasks. This may have occurred because
teaching staff did not share their views about the purpose of the task, either deliberately or by omis-
sion. Further, because the tasks themselves may have been less familiar forms, few students were
able to draw on prior experience or knowledge about the types of tasks they were engaging in.
All of these factors may have meant that implicit or socio-contextual task features were more
difficult for students to identify.
Not being able to discern implicit or socio-contextual task features may put students at a disad-
vantage because the identification of implicit task features, such as the purpose or connection to
learning outcomes, has been associated with a deeper understanding and better performance
(Oshige 2009). This observation and the findings of this study raise questions about how students
move beyond identification of explicit features to form a deeper, more coherent understanding of
the task, and how they deepen their understanding of the task by attending to implicit or socio con-
textual features. A more detailed understanding of the processes of coming to understanding a task
will help to extend theory and to identify potential supports.
Around half of the students in this study described goals rated as good (24 of 45), which took the
form of task lists or were broad rather than specific, with a further 10 expressing weaker quality goals.
Only a quarter (11 of the 24) set themselves high-quality goals to guide their work on the task. Higher
quality goals referred not only to more TASC properties, but were generally more detailed, describing
more specific actions, task- or unit-specific content, and details of evaluations or the standard of work
students aimed to achieve. Action and content goal properties were the most common, with fewer
students including time or standards within their goals.
Overall, there is a discernible pattern in the relationship between the quality of students’ task
interpretation and goals in this study which suggests that students with a better understanding of
the assignment task were more likely to articulate specific goals, which could support their engage-
ment in the task (see Appendix). The relationship is not clean, however, and we attribute this in part
of the analytical taxonomies we used which are currently fairly crude measures. Our additional quali-
tative analysis attempted to counteract this somewhat by examining the categories more closely. This
further analysis helped us to explore how goals may be related to aspects of a task. For example,
research suggests that action and content related goals may assist students to direct their attention
to relevant aspects of an assignment task, timing and standards related goals may be more likely to
promote students’ self-monitoring and evaluation while working on the assignment task (McCardle
et al. 2017; Zimmerman 2008).
In this study, explicit task features were reflected in students’ action and content goals. These
focused on the unit content related to the task including readings, tutorials and questions; and
the processes involved in writing a report, writing a reflective journal or synthesising key ideas. As
such, goals related to unit content and actions to be taken were closely aligned with or extensions
of students’ task understanding. This supports the proposition that identification of content and
action related goals might assist students to direct their attention to relevant content and actions
required for the task in ways that encourage them to reflect on, evaluate and refine their task
understanding.
12 K. BECKMAN ET AL.

Time-related goals were the least frequently planned by students across the cases in this study. All
students who described time-related goals were engaged in blogging or journaling tasks where stu-
dents engaged with weekly unit readings to complete a number of online submissions. Students
working toward the completion of a larger assignment task did not describe time-related goals.
This is significant because time-related goals provide structure for student engagement (McCardle
et al. 2017). This may be of particular importance for assignment tasks that are complex and work
needs to be broken down into goals to be completed over a number of study sessions. The
findings suggest that regular submission dates may prompt students to see the time dimension of
a task and bring timing goals to their attention. Furthermore, research suggests that checkpoints
in students’ self-goals may provide opportunities to monitor progress, recognise problems and regu-
late learning (Zimmerman, 2008).
Students in this study who described good or excellent goals were more likely to articulate goals
relating to the standard of work. Identifying a standard to work towards provides a concrete or
specific measure for self-reflection and evaluation (McCardle et al. 2017; Zimmerman 2008). Most
of these students aimed to monitor their understanding of the task to meet the assignment require-
ments by reviewing instructions or peers’ work. Three students aimed for a high or improved stan-
dard of work, describing unit materials such as assignment criteria and rubrics with which to
evaluate the standard of their work. This is consistent with standards related goals supporting self-
evaluation.
Drawing on the literature on self-regulated learning, a clear understanding of a task, as well as goals
that describe an intended standard of work, provide a specific measure with which to monitor and
evaluate progress (Hadwin and Winne 2012; Zimmerman 2008). For the small number of students in
this study who were unable to identify even these explicit assignment task features well, setting
clear goals for the completion of the task was futile. Research suggests this has flow-on effects to stu-
dents’ completion of the assignment task (Hadwin and Winne 2012). Without developing a clearer
understanding of the assignment task, inaccurate or incomplete interpretations inhibit students’
ability to set appropriate goals, which would likely impact students’ selection of tactics and strategies,
to monitor and evaluate their progress, and ability to make adaptations. For those students who did
demonstrate a better understanding of the task, this was linked to better quality goals and goals
that incorporated properties that may support them to regulate their learning.
As university students are increasingly engaged in open-ended, often complex, assignment tasks it is
important to consider how we might support students’ self-regulation. Research suggests that explicit
teaching of SRL strategies has little impact (McCardle et al. 2017). Thus, opportunities to support students
SRL in open-ended online tasks may lie in the ways tasks are designed and supported by teachers. Task
understanding is not solely the responsibility of the student, but developed through an ongoing inter-
action between the teachers and students. Task design and communication may be particularly signifi-
cant for tasks that are complex and are less familiar or less prescribed than traditional assignments
(Oshige 2009), such the open-ended online assignment tasks we have focused on in this study.
We would particularly highlight two possibilities based on the theoretical framing and findings of
this study. One is to engage students in task interpretation and goal setting in tandem. That is to
recursively use activities focused on actively interpreting the task to identify goals and to elicit
goals that address the four properties of time, action, standards and content to prompt students
to reflect on what they understand to be the keys aspects of the task. Such a framing may be particu-
larly useful for tasks like the ones we have looked at which may not be well defined and require stu-
dents to do work in interpretation and decision-making. A second suggestion is to help teachers build
their awareness of the explicit, implicit and socio-contextual features of the tasks they are designing.
This framing may assist teachers to understand their own task well and enable them to better support
their students by sharing these levels of interpretation with students (Butler and Cartier 2004).
In proposing any implications or future directions it is important to acknowledge this study’s limit-
ations. The findings presented in this paper focus only on students’ initial engagement with the task
and does not fully demonstrate the recursive nature of SRL, changes in students’ task interpretation
 STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 13

and goals over time or task achievement. For this analysis, we did not explore the variability across
cases and, as noted, above the taxonomies we used are relatively crude in the definitions of the cat-
egories. And, as with all SRL studies, we are intervening and possibly prompting students to be more
self-regulated than they may have otherwise been. All of our findings must be viewed as emergent
with their main value in directing further work.
Despite these limitations, the authenticity of the open-ended online assignment tasks explored in
this study provides a new and timely contribution to the existing body of literature on student task
interpretation and self-regulated learning (Rivera-Reyes, Lawanto, and Pate 2017; Oshige 2009;
Hadwin and Winne 2012). There is significant scope for further research into a wider range of
tasks in naturalistic settings, expanded to a larger cohort of students and with further refinements
to the analytical framing. A complementary line of inquiry could investigate the design and
support of assignment tasks to further develop practical strategies for teachers and students
which could lead to improvements in student task interpretation.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This research was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Projects [DP140100406].

ORCID
Karley Beckman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3435-5083
Tiffani Apps http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7688-176X
Sue Bennett http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9607-6285
Barney Dalgarno http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6935-6844
Gregor Kennedy http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9423-7786
Lori Lockyer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1517-2342

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Appendix

Table A1. Overview of coding for each student participant.

Student Quality of task Layers of task Quality of task
code interpretation interpretation goals Properties of task goals
CStu08 Low Explicit Weak n/a
AStu07 Low Explicit Weak n/a
BStu05 Low Explicit Weak n/a
AStu14 Low Explicit Basic Action
AStu16 Low Explicit Basic Content
EStu09 Moderate Explicit Basic Action
DStu04 Moderate Explicit Basic Content
DStu05 Moderate Explicit Basic Action
AStu03 Moderate Explicit Basic Action
AStu09 Moderate Explicit Basic Action
EStu02 Moderate Explicit Good Action, content
EStu03 Moderate Explicit Good Action, content
EStu10 Moderate Explicit Good Action, content
CStu01 Moderate Explicit Good Time, content
AStu04 Moderate Explicit Good Action, standard
AStu05 Moderate Explicit Good Action, standard
AStu08 Moderate Explicit Good Action, content
AStu10 Moderate Explicit Good Action, content
AStu12 Moderate Explicit Good Action, standard
BStu03 Moderate Explicit Good Time, content
BStu04 Moderate Explicit Good Content, standard
BStu06 Moderate Explicit Good Action, content
BStu07 Moderate Explicit Good Action, standard
BStu08 Moderate Explicit Good Action, content
BStu09 Moderate Explicit Good Time, standard

(Continued)
 STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 15

Table A1. Continued.

Student Quality of task Layers of task Quality of task
code interpretation interpretation goals Properties of task goals
BStu10 Moderate Explicit Good Time, action
CStu12 Moderate Implicit Good Time, action
CStu05 Moderate Implicit, socio-contextual Good Action, content
DStu02 Moderate Explicit Excellent Action, standard, content
AStu06 Moderate Explicit Excellent Action, standard, content
AStu13 Moderate Explicit Excellent Time, action, standard
BStu02 Moderate Explicit Excellent Time, action, standard
DStu01 High Explicit Good Action, content
DStu03 High Explicit Good Action, content
AStu02 High Explicit Good Time, standard
BStu01 High Explicit Good Time, content
BStu11 High Explicit, implicit Good Time, action
AStu11 High Explicit, implicit Good Action, content
AStu01 High Explicit Excellent Action, standard, content
AStu15 High Explicit Excellent Action, standard, content
EStu01 High Explicit, implicit Excellent Action, standard, content
EStu04 High Explicit, implicit Excellent Action, standard, content
CStu02 High Explicit, implicit Excellent Time, action, content
CStu04 High Implicit, socio-contextual Excellent Time, action, content
EStu05 High Explicit Exemplar Time, action, standard,
content