Questions? Contact the Collaborative.
The Collaborative is a research and capacity-building center that aims to study and improve how faculty teach and use technology to help students build self-directed learning skills and increase students’ success in postsecondary online STEM courses.
Who are we?
The Collaborative is a partnership of SRI Education, the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Achieving the Dream, and nine broad-access colleges and universities.
What are we doing?
Working with our partner colleges and universities, the Collaborative is investigating how to support STEM faculty to help online students develop skills to manage their learning. These skills include motivation to learn, planning and monitoring learning tasks, and selecting applied learning strategies – together called self-directed learning skills.
What does our five-year project include?
- Interviews, focus groups, and surveys with students, faculty, and administrators and a synthesis of existing research
- Rapid-cycle experiments to test new online tools that help STEM faculty incorporate self-directed learning instructional strategies into their online courses
- Development of an instructional model and toolkit so colleges and universities can use what we learn
- Creation of opportunities for authentic exchanges and collaboration around improving student supports and spreading the word about the promise of self-directed learning