Currently accepted at: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Jan 7, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 8, 2026 - Mar 5, 2026
Date Accepted: Jul 24, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
This paper has been accepted and is currently in production.
It will appear shortly on 10.2196/90972
The final accepted version (not copyedited yet) is in this tab.
Academic Self-Regulation in Face-to-Face and Virtual Medical Graduate Education: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Structural Equation Modeling Study
Background:
Medical graduate education increasingly requires students to regulate their learning across different instructional modalities. However, less is known about how motivational, emotional, and cognitive factors are associated with academic self-regulation in face-to-face and virtual learning contexts.
Objective:
This study examined a comparative structural equation model of academic self-regulation among medical graduate students in face-to-face and virtual programs.
Methods:
A cross-sectional comparative study was conducted among 515 master’s-level students at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, including 310 students in face-to-face programs and 205 students in virtual programs. Participants completed standardized Persian self-report questionnaires measuring academic self-regulation, task value, academic self-efficacy, cognitive academic engagement, perfectionism, academic help-seeking, need for closure, positive achievement emotions, and future orientation. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and path analysis/structural equation modeling in LISREL 8.8.
Results:
The structural model showed acceptable fit in both the face-to-face group, χ²/df=2.06, CFI=0.98, GFI=0.97, AGFI=0.96, RMSEA=0.052, and the virtual group, χ²/df=1.70, CFI=1.00, GFI=0.99, AGFI=0.98, RMSEA=0.045. Cognitive academic engagement was positively associated with academic self-regulation in both groups, with β=0.38 in the face-to-face group and β=0.35 in the virtual group. Need for closure was negatively associated with academic self-regulation, with β=–0.23 and β=–0.31, respectively. The model explained 44% of the variance in academic self-regulation in the face-to-face group and 46% in the virtual group. The indirect association between positive achievement emotions and academic self-regulation through cognitive engagement was not statistically significant in either group.
Conclusions:
The findings support a theoretically informed structural model in which cognitive engagement and selected motivational factors are associated with academic self-regulation across face-to-face and virtual medical graduate education. Because the study was cross-sectional and based on self-report data, the findings should be interpreted as structural associations rather than causal effects.
Clinicaltrial:
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.