An Online Learning Collaboratory to Address Multidisciplinary Learning Challenges at Scale

“Ensuring inclusive and quality education for all to promote lifelong learning” is among the United Nations’ global time-critical sustainable development challenges. Massive open online courses and other online learning systems can potentially address this challenge by fostering high-quality online learning at scale. However, online learning introduces complex challenges that involve multiple disciplines, varied learning contexts, and diverse learner backgrounds. There are plenty of research initiatives that try to address this problem, but they are fragmented efforts that could benefit from a community effort. We propose an online learning collaboratory framework to leverage and connect ongoing research efforts. In this paper, we propose four objectives for the online learning collaboratory and discuss existing work aligned with such objectives, which are: evaluation and refinement of instructional designs, interdisciplinary communication through design patterns, design pattern implementation, and bridging communities of practice. The collaboratory should bridge different communities through design patterns and connect datadriven practices and tools to address multidisciplinary learning challenges at