Freedom to Learn Online, and Why Strategy Matters
A new study by researchers from the HSE Institute of Education—Anna Gorbunova, Kseniya Adamovich, and Jamie Costley—explores how students navigate learner-controlled online courses and the consequences that different behavioural strategies have for learning outcomes. The findings were published in the article Behaviour Patterns Characterise Students’ Choices and Relate to Cognitive Load and Performance in Learner-Controlled Environments in the journal The Internet and Higher Education.
The research team analysed learning behaviour in an online master’s course on data protection law. Instead of relying on students’ self-reports, the researchers examined actual digital traces of learning activity. In total, more than 14,000 student interactions with the online platform were analysed, allowing the team to reconstruct how students moved through course materials in real time.
Their analysis revealed three distinct learning strategies:
- The first group, described as classic learners, followed a traditional instructional path. These students typically began by watching video lectures before moving on to examples and case materials. They spent most of their time on video content and rarely switched between different learning activities.
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The second group, labelled balanced learners, distributed their attention more evenly across lectures, worked examples, practical tasks, and reviewed solutions. Interestingly, they spent less overall time on the platform than other students, yet engaged with all key course components.
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The third group, practice-oriented learners, preferred to begin with solving tasks and analysing cases—often before engaging with theoretical explanations. They were the most active in navigating course materials, frequently switching between different types of learning resources.
These behavioural differences were closely linked to learning outcomes. Balanced learners demonstrated the highest performance in the final assessment, outperforming both classic and practice-oriented learners. At the same time, practice-oriented learners reported lower intrinsic cognitive load—meaning that starting with tasks often felt less mentally demanding, even if it did not always produce the best results.
The study also highlights the importance of how cognitive effort is distributed during learning. Only germane cognitive load—the mental effort directed at understanding and integrating new knowledge—showed a positive relationship with academic performance. This finding reinforces a central idea of cognitive load theory: effective learning is not about minimising effort, but about directing effort toward meaningful processing.
Our findings show that success in online courses offering learner choice depends not only on the quality of the content, but also on how students engage with it. Taking the path of least resistance—focusing mainly on lectures, for example—may limit learning outcomes. The same applies to an excessive focus on practical work without sufficient theoretical grounding. Engaging with different types of materials in a more balanced way tends to produce better results. These findings highlight the need for online course design to move beyond uniform solutions towards more personalised forms of support,” said Anna Gorbunova.
Looking ahead, the researchers suggest that digital platforms may eventually be able to identify students’ learning patterns in real time by analysing digital traces. This could make it possible to provide timely, targeted guidance. In this way, online education could become flexible and adaptive, helping students to develop more effective learning strategies.