December 23, 2024 | By Ellen Wasserman and Susan Bickerstaff

In online courses, students are expected to take more ownership of planning their learning approaches and study methods, organizing their time, seeking help, and following through on coursework. In online STEM courses, these expectations are compounded by disciplinary cultures that have traditionally emphasized meritocracy and competitiveness. Online STEM courses thus tend to have high withdrawal and failure rates.

Online STEM faculty, especially in broad-access institutions, are eager to find ways to engage and connect with students, increase course success rates, and improve the representation of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in STEM courses and programs. The Collaborative is working with a team of practitioners to develop an easy-to-implement set of strategies to support self-directed learning (SDL) skills and mindsets. In this post, we preview the features of a forthcoming instructional model and share how our design process has benefited from collaborating with practitioner partners.

The instructional model consists of three mutually reinforcing strategies that work together within a course to support students’ motivational, metacognitive, and applied learning processes—the components of the Collaborative’s SDL framework. It features reflection prompts to help students plan their learning and build their metacognitive skills; short videos to foster belonging, and on managing time and cultivating a growth mindset; and collaborative learning activities to foster a sense of belonging and promote help seeking. The strategies are structured to build and reinforce student skills over the course of the term. While developed in the online context, the instructional model should prove useful across instructional delivery modalities.

The instructional model draws on several strands of the Collaborative’s research, including a study to understand the successes and challenges students and faculty experience in online courses; a literature review of evidence-based practices that facilitated the creation of the SDL framework; and a set of rapid-cycle experiments on specific strategies.

Insights From the Co-Development Process

To ensure the instructional model would be relevant and useful for multiple audiences, we needed guidance from practitioners. The Collaborative brought together a team of four experienced practitioners with diverse perspectives—including math and biology faculty, faculty developers, and senior administrators—to co-develop the model with Collaborative researchers. This team has met monthly over the past year to offer their feedback and insights. In addition, instructors at our partner institutions piloted a provisional model over the summer, and we conducted interviews to gather their feedback.

Along the way, we have learned some important lessons about creating an effective instructional model to build SDL skills:

1. Keep the load light. Online STEM courses often include a large volume of course content, and instructors are often stretched thin with significant demands on their time. Given this context, practitioners strongly advised keeping the model simple and easy to implement. One instructor reported that any new addition to a course would replace something else; therefore, each component of the model should include a clear rationale and benefits for students. To address this feedback, the instructional model includes strategies that are likely familiar to faculty. For example, some piloting instructors added the model’s reflection prompts to the course discussion board and reported they were more valuable than previous discussion assignments. As many faculty already use group work, the model’s collaborative activities can be tailored to enhance preexisting group activities. Instructors who piloted the model in their online courses this summer found they could implement the strategies, even in short course formats such as a four-week term.
2. Reinforce and repeat SDL activities. Many other research studies have tested “single-dose” interventions to help students build SDL skills. By contrast, the Collaborative’s model bundles a set of mutually supportive strategies. The pacing guide for the model outlines a flow of SDL activities from the beginning to the end of a course. Many of the activities work together to reinforce skill development. The practitioner collaborators affirmed that reinforcing SDL skills throughout the course is beneficial to students, particularly if the activities continue to support students’ developing skills. When used together, the reflective prompts and the time management video help students think about their strategies for balancing coursework, jobs, family, and other responsibilities. An instructor in the pre-pilot described how the repeated prompt activities helped a student change their study approach and begin passing tests. The instructor attributed this in part to how the prompts reinforced reflection about planning for the time and resources needed to complete coursework.
3. Support faculty adoption of the instructional model. The co-development practitioners and pre-pilot instructors highlighted the importance of providing concrete supports to faculty, including clear and concise guidance and resources for implementing the strategies. While instructors may find the instructional model valuable, they may also find it challenging to implement if they are unfamiliar with SDL, do not have training in non-content-related teaching practices, or feel there isn’t time to add more activities to a course. To support instructors, the instructional model includes a strong rationale for students’ engagement in the SDL activities. For example, the rationale for the prompt activity addresses metacognition: “Did you know that when you think about your thinking—called metacognition—your brain has a chance to look at your ideas as an observer? As your instructor, I want you to get the most out of your learning experience in this course. To help with this, we will use metacognitive prompt activities designed to help you reflect, plan, think about your progress, and learn about the skills that successful students use.”

The model’s implementation materials will also include a full suite of resources for professional developers and administrators to support their faculty colleagues. This package of materials will make it easier for colleges to integrate the model into multiple course sections or throughout a department or institution.

Co-development that creates a structured process for authentic practitioner engagement can strengthen interventional research. In the case of the Collaborative, it opened up communication about the appropriateness of the strategies as well as how to make implementation more feasible. Through the co-development process, we gained important insights into the usefulness of the instructional model to reinforce SDL skill development and the need for institutional supports to successful adoption.

Next Steps for the SDL Instructional Model

In spring 2025, the Collaborative will conduct a rigorous pilot test of the instructional model in online STEM courses at our partner colleges. Then, the Collaborative will finalize the instructional model and make it freely available to higher education institutions and faculty nationally.

Interested in learning more?

For more information, contact us at PostsecCollab@sri.com, follow us on Twitter at @PostsecCollab, and sign up for our newsletter at https://tinyurl.com/Postsecnewsletter.

Tags: Instructional Strategies Online Learning Postsecondary Learning Self-directed Learning