Students in the vocational schools in Taiwan largely care little about their grades and do not get involved adequately in their schoolwork. To respond effectively to this challenge of teaching, two cases were studied and compared; one is a class using a traditional method of teaching and the other a class deploying innovative teaching methods of blended learning (BL) with web-mediated self-regulated learning (SRL). The effects of combining BL with SRL on developing students' computing skills in applying database management system (DBMS) to solve authentic problems are encouraging. The students in the case of BL with SRL paid positive attention to this newer teaching method and had a statistically higher rate of passing a certification test than those in the traditional class. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)