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 … Continue reading Practitioners Leading the Way: Developing a Model for Self-Directed Learning in Online Courses
Before joining the Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative as a fellow, my perspective on education was primarily that of a student: absorbing information without deeply considering the intricacies of teaching. However, this fellowship has been transformative. It has broadened my understanding of the myriad factors that shape effective learning experiences, including teaching methodologies, curriculum design, and peer interactions.
With the huge growth in online courses since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty are increasingly aware that they need to adapt their teaching to the new environment of online instruction. But they may not know how to adapt and, in particular, how to support students’ skills in managing their own learning in online courses.
The COVID-19 pandemic showed that online learning is here to stay, but it also revealed knowledge gaps around how to support all students to learn effectively online. As a result, educators are now highly motivated to develop new models for online teaching and learning that build students’ skills and motivation to learn.
Pima Community College in Arizona is a Hispanic-serving institution that enrolls about 43,000 students, many of whom are working and have families. With 40% of students fully online, and more in virtual and hybrid courses, the college ensures that online courses are not just pale imitations of in-person courses and that their design takes into account how students learn.
In 2020, Macomb Community College combined the college’s academic literacy and writing center and academic content tutoring center under one administrative team, allowing the college to reimagine tutoring services to better meet the needs of our students enrolled in remote, online, hybrid, and in-person courses. This shift—combined with the educational impacts we observed from COVID-19—encouraged us to apply what we had learned in working with students on reading and writing to other disciplines such as math, business, and physics and to develop new ways to support self-regulated learning across disciplines.