2025 Innovations Conference, March 11, 2025

Join us at The League for Innovation in Community College’s 2025 Innovations Conference, where researchers and faculty will present a framework designed to bolster students’ abilities to remain motivated and manage their learning processes in online courses.

Beyond Engagement: Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Learning Online

Tuesday, March 11, 10:15-11:15am CT

Students and faculty both encounter challenges in the online environment. These challenges frequently manifest and are understood in terms of low student engagement. In this session, researchers and community college faculty will present a specific and actionable framework to bolster students’ abilities to remain motivated and manage their learning processes in online courses.

The presenters refer to these mutually reinforcing mindsets and behaviors as self-directed learning (SDL) skills and they include motivational processes (e.g., self-efficacy), metacognitive processes (e.g., planning), and applied learning processes (e.g., help seeking). Presenters will describe a set of evidence-based instructional strategies to support SDL developed in collaboration with instructors at broad-access institutions.

Speakers will share research findings on how the strategies have been implemented in postsecondary online STEM courses and their effect on student outcomes. A community college faculty member will share their experience implementing the strategies in an online biology course.

Presenters

  • Ellen Wasserman, Research Associate, Community College Research Center
  • Allystair Jones, Department Chair, Science & Professor of Biology, Odessa College
  • Hannah Cheever, Senior Education Researcher, SRI Education

Learn more on the Conference program website.

Related Resources

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