Despite increasing attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion in postsecondary STEM education, the field continues to see gaps in the participation and success of historically marginalized students (e.g., due to race or ethnicity, gender, first-generation status, and especially intersectionality).
Carlton Fong, a professor of curriculum and instruction at Texas State University, has expertise in motivation, metacognition, and instructional design, with a focus on STEM courses. His work on student agency and how it helps students feel connected to college and motivates them to seek help.
Scaling evidence-based education technology (edtech) products in the postsecondary market is challenging. Developers need to figure out how to break into classrooms long dominated by commercial publishers – and how to attract funding when investors tend to focus on the much larger and less fragmented K–12 market.
During my first semester at Wake Tech college, I was not well acquainted with resources such as student success coaches, advisors, and tutoring services. However, once I became aware of them and started using them, I discovered how helpful they can be. New college students face a variety of challenges, and one effective way to overcome these hurdles is to seek help.
Being a college student can be hard, especially for first-time students. We tend to think we will have everything together, but we are often wrong. We are starving for the learning we will experience in college, but we don’t quite have all of the study habits or knowledge about how to interact with our instructors that are necessary for us to grow.
The ability to manage one’s own learning processes, known as self-directed learning (SDL), is a crucial factor in students’ academic success and one that learning scientists consider being open to improvement.