Aug. 11, 2026 | By Hannah Cheever
When faculty teach online courses, they lose one of the most powerful tools for instruction: the physical presence of students. When facing a classroom, it is possible to see confusion on students’ faces. However, as one STEM instructor put it, “In an online class, I don’t have those visual cues.”
In addition to encountering challenges with course content, students in online courses may be struggling with time management, questioning whether they belong, and feeling unsure how to ask for help.
The Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative’s Self-Directed Learning (SDL) Instructional Model – publicly released this summer – helps make those hidden signals more visible. The SDL Instructional Model was co-developed with faculty and administrators and piloted in online STEM courses at five community colleges and broad-access universities.
The model includes three evidence-based instructional strategies – SDL videos, SDL prompts, and student-peer interaction and networking (SPIN) – that invite students to share through online reflections how they are managing their learning and how well they are connecting with peers, responding to challenges, and using course resources. All three strategies ask students to share their reflections directly in the course learning management system via short-answer responses.
These reflections provide faculty with valuable sources of information to adjust their instruction, offer students timely support, and strengthen the course’s learning community. At a time when technology is often seen as a cause of deepening isolation and barriers between students, the strategies show how faculty can use online tools to build stronger community in their classroom and adjust their instruction to better meet the needs of their students.
How Can Faculty use the Reflections?
Using student reflections does not mean faculty need to respond in depth to every student every time. The goal is to treat the reflections as formative data and to look for patterns that can inform small, meaningful adjustments. They help faculty see what students are experiencing while there is still time to respond. This can be as simple as a three-step process:
- Skim student responses for recurring themes and patterns.
- Notice where students need support, connection, clarification, or encouragement.
- Respond with a small instructional adjustment, class message, resource, or change to future instruction.
What Can Faculty Learn from the Three Strategies?
Each strategy in the SDL Instructional Model invites student reflections, which provide key insights into the student experience across the academic term that faculty can use to achieve several important goals.
- Build Foundation for Community Early
- Understand How Students are Developing and Practicing Their Work
Across all the strategies, students share reflections on their learning process. Faculty can directly see how prepared students are to do the work and whether they feel they are learning. From this, faculty can provide more targeted support to those in need.
For example, after reading student reflections, an instructor might post: “Several students shared that they are planning to review notes the night before the quiz. That can feel efficient, but spacing your studying across several shorter sessions is often more effective. This week, try setting aside three 30-minute blocks instead of one long cram session.”
- Gain Insights From Students’ Applying Their Learning to Inform Future Course Design and Instruction
Student reflections not only improve faculty’s capacity to provide real-time support, but can contribute ideas to improve instruction in future courses. Faculty can translate the insights they glean from the student reflections in one term into more intentional student guidance in future terms. Also, faculty can use one of the SDL strategies—students’ personal “message to a future student” describing how they solved learning challenges in the class—to pass along short, anonymous advice and tips to students in future terms. This starts the term off by building a sense of connection as they can relate to prior students’ experience and giving students personal guidance on what to expect.
The SPIN introductory questionnaire and the sense of belonging video both help students share information about themselves, their goals, their interests, and their feelings of connection. Faculty can use these responses to establish a sense of community by sharing common interests, themes, and trends in the class in a way that honors students’ privacy. Faculty also gain insight directly into their students’ strengths and interests in the courses, allowing them to personalize their instruction and engagement with individual students.
How Can Student Reflections Facilitate Faculty Reflection?
By making students’ learning processes more visible, the student reflections can facilitate faculty members’ own reflections on how to enhance their teaching methods. These reflections can create a continuous feedback loop that helps faculty design and deliver more responsive, connected, and supportive online courses.
Interested in learning more about the SDL Instructional Model? Explore the full model, or access dedicated resources for instructors and campus leaders.
For more information, contact us at PostsecCollab@sri.com or follow us on X at @PostsecCollab.
Tags: Instructional Strategies Online Learning Postsecondary Learning Self-directed Learning