Explore, Exploit, and Prune in the Classroom: Strategic Resource Management Behaviors Predict Performance

Self-regulated learners strategically manage physical, technological, online, and social resources for learning—by selecting that could be useful, reflecting on how useful these have been, adjusting resource use accordingly. We propose a model conceptualizes management as learners’ intentional, self-reflective decisions to explore new resources, exploit (continue use) previously prune (stop using) ineffective resources. modeled 4,766 students’ reported exploration, exploitation, pruning between three class exams among four cohorts of an organic chemistry (i.e., more than 100,000 discrete data points use). Each behavioral mechanisms predicted academic achievement: The students exploring, exploiting, their exams, the higher they performed subsequent controlling prior performance. These findings enrich self-regulated learning theories by concretizing which take control learning.