Self-Directed Learning

Using SDL to Individualize Instruction

Early interest in SDL focused better on understanding the instructional processes that help students become more successful as independent learners. Preparing graduates for lifelong learning, both personally and professionally, is an important goal for most universities. To accomplish that goal, skills in SDL are developed in a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses. Some of these courses are primarily independent study courses, such as directed readings, theses, or self-designed majors or minors. More traditional courses may use individualized learning plans or reflective journals to help students better understand and control their own learning.

Supporting SDL requires that instructors take on a much different role. As learning becomes more individualized and student-centered, instructors act more as facilitators of learning than as transmitters of knowledge. In this role, facilitators help students locate resources, stimulate interest in new topics, challenge students to think more creatively or critically about their learning, and assist in designing and carrying out useful evaluation activities. Individualized learning projects can be quite specialized, and students must often look to experts other than instructors to provide feedback and final assessment of their projects.

Faculty using SDL techniques should anticipate that many students find the increased responsibility for their learning to be disconcerting and uncomfortable. Courses can be designed to provide valuable scaffolding to help students gradually increase their degree of independence in planning, implementing, and evaluating their work. Learning contracts are widely used as a way of systematizing and operationalizing the step in completing an SDL project.

Using SDL in coursework can also help class members develop skills that relate to being members of a supportive learning community. A common misconception about SDL is that self-directed learners are isolated. On the contrary, most researchers have emphasized the importance of social context and support for planning and carrying out learning activities, and research studies have found that many successful practitioners of SDL have rich social networks. Effective instructors in SDL will structure time and activities that allow class members to share individual projects and to draw on other participants as valuable resources for learning.

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