February 28, 2025 | By Susan Bickerstaff

As part of the Collaborative’s efforts to foster and support students’ self-directed learning (SDL) in online courses, we have explored the research literature, consulted experts, collaborated with our college partners, and gathered perspectives from administrators, staff, and faculty. To complement these efforts and deepen our understanding of SDL and online learning, earlier this month we released a research brief that adds a critical set of voices: those of students.

Researchers interviewed 25 students enrolled in online STEM courses at the Collaborative’s two- and four-year partner institutions. About half of these students were enrolled in courses that were fully asynchronous, a modality that presents particular challenges for instructors and students. In these interviews, researchers asked students about the strategies they used to manage their online learning and how they understood the three processes in the Collaborative’s SDL framework: motivation (including sense of belonging and confidence), metacognition (including goal setting, planning, and reflecting), and applied learning (including time management and help-seeking).

The findings from this research inform the Collaborative’s refinement of a set of instructional strategies that will be published later this year. They also provide the following broader insights into how online instructors can support their students’ success.

Interaction matters

Many students reported that it was hard to stay motivated in online courses. As technologies to support online learning evolve and advance, it can be easy to lose sight of the foundation of many motivating instructional experiences: human interaction. Students said that peer-to-peer interactions helped them see they were not alone in struggling with course material—a particularly important realization in challenging STEM courses. When faculty demonstrated empathy, whether in a thoughtful email or in a Zoom meeting, students felt more connected, supported, and confident. At the same time, students affirmed what faculty also reported: that fostering interaction in asynchronous courses is challenging. Discussion boards can feel tedious; group assignments can fall flat.

Yet the benefits of building community in online courses—including an increase in motivational processes like sense of belonging and confidence—suggest that striving for an interactive online learning environment is worth it. The brief includes several student-endorsed recommendations, including requiring attendance at virtual office hours, crafting caring email messages, and using video-recording technologies to allow for asynchronous interaction.

Students seek guidance on ways to approach learning

A key finding from this research is that students bring numerous strengths to their online courses, including time management strategies and other learning processes that served them well in high school, employment, and other contexts. At the same time, they reported that postsecondary online STEM courses are different—and therefore the most efficient or effective ways to use course materials were not always clear. Students described an overwhelming array of beneficial learning resources in their online courses: videos, lecture notes, note-taking templates, slides, homework courseware, and links to supplemental web-based materials. Students appreciated clearly organized courses with predictable workflows and due dates.

However, students said instructors rarely offered guidance on effective learning approaches (e.g., self-quizzing), suggesting that in many classes students are largely left on their own to determine when and how to study. Drawing on the SDL framework and students’ experiences, the brief offer recommendations on ways to help students engage in metacognitive planning and reflection that can give them more control over how to manage their online learning.

Help-seeking is hard

Faculty want students who are struggling to ask for help, which is an important applied learning skill. A brief conversation to clarify a key concept or provide an additional resource could be the difference between course success and failure. And yet both faculty and students reported that students in online courses are reluctant to reach out. The interviews explain why help-seeking can be so challenging for students in online courses. One student said, “It’s like sending a risky text to somebody you like—you don’t know what they’re about to say.” The spontaneous, informal help-seeking that occurs in a face-to-face course (hand-raising, a quick question before or after class) is less feasible in online modalities, and students reported that composing an email message feels more formal and thus higher stakes.

The brief offers ideas for how instructors can foster help-seeking as part of a broader effort to bolster students’ applied learning skills. Strategies include increasing the frequency, variety, and quality of interactions (either related or not related to help-seeking) between instructors and students. Students also reported that timely, encouraging responses from instructors increased the likelihood that they would reach out for help again.

Pilot-testing strategies in online courses

Overall, students’ reports about their online courses reflect a mixed picture. Many described supportive, empathic faculty teaching well-organized courses. But most also described at least some challenges, including feelings of isolation, frustration, and a desire for more guidance on the best way to learn in their course.

This spring the Collaborative is pilot-testing a set of strategies that are designed to address these challenges by bolstering students’ motivational, metacognitive, and applied learning processes, including sense of belonging and confidence and their ability to plan for learning, reflect, and seek help when needed. Our interviews with students show how instructional approaches that support these processes in online courses can make a difference for students.

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 Self-directed Learning