Flexibility is a crucial characteristic of higher education: students largely determine where, when, and how they learn. Furthermore, students are increasingly empowered to decide what they learn: Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences aim for more freedom of choice, individual learning paths, and adaptive assessment within courses and curricula. This increased flexibility places demands on the often limited self-regulation skills of students. To ensure student success in such flexible education, practice-oriented research on the support of self-regulated learning is essential.

Together with Prof. Dr. Peter Verkoeijen (EUR/Avans University of Applied Sciences Breda), Prof. Dr. Anique de Bruin will be the project leader of the NRO funded, national consortium "SELFLEX: Towards Evidence-informed Support for Self-regulation of Flexible Learning," which will start in the autumn of 2023, with a subsidy amount of €900.000.

In addition to the aforementioned parties, the consortium consists of partners from Radboud University, University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Open University, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, and Hanze Hogeschool. The research within the consortium will focus on how characteristics of the student, educational design (including assessment), and peers and teachers can be utilized to better cope with flexibility in education and to further develop self-regulation skills. The research will be both quantitative and qualitative in nature, and interventions will be tested through design-based research within existing curricula in higher education.