Magna 20 Minute Mentor | How Can I Help Online Students Develop Autonomy and Take More Responsibility for Their Learning?

In this Magna video Flower Darby presents various ways that instructors can help students become more independent and responsible learners. These are very important skills for learners to develop and are especially helpful for them to become more successful in their asynchronous online courses. The flexibility of these courses requires that students need to manage their own time, create study plans and become more self-motivated.

Ms. Darby states that instructors can create certain learning activities that will help students develop these important lifelong skills. One of these areas is assisting students in being able to plan how they can be successful. She proposes using a goal-setting exercise which requires that learners identify one potential challenge that may occur during their learning, and ascertain one strategy that could help overcome this challenge. Another learning activity is to have the students develop a “structured work plan”, where they submit a schedule for when they will complete certain tasks in order to meet an assignment deadline. This can help learners evaluate their own progress and make any necessary adjustments to achieve their required objectives.

The other learning skill that Ms. Darby focuses on is providing the students with some choices about how they participate in class and perform certain coursework. This can help students become more independent and self-directed by taking increased ownership of their learning goals. Some of the ways to provide these options is to offer multiple discussion questions that the learners can choose from, or allow students to self-enroll in groups based on different topics. Another way to promote student autonomy is allowing them to choose the format they prefer for completing an assignment, such as writing a paper, developing a concept map or producing a PowerPoint.

During this presentation, Ms. Darby provides other resources and learning activities to help students monitor and direct their own learning. This video addresses the LCCC Faculty Competency domain for Teaching and Learning and can be accessed by completing this one-time registration to view all the videos in the Magna 20 Minute Mentor series.