Understanding How MIT Students Learn: Learning Strategies Assessment Project

Understanding How MIT Students Learn: Learning Strategies Assessment Project

Independently managing one’s own learning is a critical college competency. The Teaching + Learning Lab’s Learning Strategies Assessment (LSA) is investigating how MIT students manage their self-regulated learning (SRL)—that is, their time/effort, cognition, motivation, and wellbeing—to achieve their goals. These SRL skills are essential to success at MIT and form the foundation for lifelong learning (Dent & Koenka, 2016). The LSA’s Learning Snapshot survey was designed to capture how MIT students manage their self-regulated learning over a period of seven days. We successfully piloted the Learning Snapshot survey with undergraduates in Fall 2024, and some of those key findings are now available on our website. We are repeating data collection this fall to evaluate and refine the Learning Snapshot survey, which we hope to make available to students more widely in subsequent project years. The LSA Project will inform campus efforts to support student learning, engagement, and work-life balance. The data collected will be available to all MIT community members interested in enhancing their teaching and learning practices. If you are interested, please get in touch with Dr. Amanda Baker, Associate Director of Research and Evaluation.

— Melissa Mangino, TLL