The first issue to be resolved is the difference between learner autonomy and self-instruction. It seems to me that sometimes it may be difficult to see the difference. Accordingly, providing proper instruction to students may be difficult. Another problematic issue is whether learner autonomy should be considered a capacity or behaviour? Is it learner responsibility or learner control? Finally, does learner autonomy necessarily mean teacher autonomy? And vice verse?
In order to resolve these issues, the teacher who would like to have more autonomous learners should start by analysing their own autonomy first, which leads to the next issue: how do we determine how autonomous we actually are? Is there an evaluation kit for it?
The most general presupposition about autonomy is that it implies freedom from external control, that is being independent enough in what one is doing so that a) nobody thinks the person needs control and b) the person feels secure and comfortable enough not to fear any form of potential control.
An autonomous teacher would then be the teacher who is a) capable of self-directed professional action, equal to self-directed teaching and b) self-directed professional development, which in turn, is equal to self-directed teacher-learning. Both these capacities necessarily include freedom from control over professional action and development.
The question to be raised at this point is how to help learners develop that same autonomy. The primary guideline should be to help them acquire the capacity of self-directed learning and development. A logical presupposition certainly is that once students have learnt how to learn, they will learn how to develop that capacity. Thus, we are back at the beginning: How do we, the teachers, presuming we ourselves are autonomous, teach our students to be autonomous? More than that, how can the computer help us?
The greatest challenge for the teacher is to prepare tasks and activities by providing a certain level of freedom and yet offering enough support at the same time. Given the premise that this blog is meant to provide ideas for computer-assisted language learning, a brilliant way to achieve the balance between said freedom and support is by means of a webquest.
A webquest is an enquiry-oriented lesson format in which most, or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The trick is to provide the students with some information to start from and then let them search for the rest of the necessary information on their own. The next step is to have them process the information and produce some result in the form of written or spoken assignments. Both the information provided and expected as well as the final production may include all sorts of formats, types, resources, forms, genres, etc. It will all depend on what the students are expected to learn.
A webquest I have tried and have had quite some success with is Zunal, an online webquest maker providing all the necessary elements for an interactive web-based enquiry-oriented lesson.
The special thing about Zunal is that the basic layout, structure and elements are already there. It is up to the author to decide how many of the elements shall fit the objectives of the lesson and be included in the final format. Every segment of the webquest can be created separately and include various forms of information.
For instance, the teacher can provide links to online resources or include a selection of documents the students are expected to read. Furthermore, a template can be provided for a writing assignment, audio/ visual material can be added, vocabulary can be added with direct links to dictionaries explaining the item. Finally, an evaluation rubrics can be added and included as a reference for the students to follow when completing their writing tasks. The rubrics can outline the expected criteria and provide the level of expected performance by clearly stating the way a certain criterion, if completed to a certain amount, will be assessed.
The question to be raised at this point is how to help learners develop that same autonomy. The primary guideline should be to help them acquire the capacity of self-directed learning and development. A logical presupposition certainly is that once students have learnt how to learn, they will learn how to develop that capacity. Thus, we are back at the beginning: How do we, the teachers, presuming we ourselves are autonomous, teach our students to be autonomous? More than that, how can the computer help us?
The greatest challenge for the teacher is to prepare tasks and activities by providing a certain level of freedom and yet offering enough support at the same time. Given the premise that this blog is meant to provide ideas for computer-assisted language learning, a brilliant way to achieve the balance between said freedom and support is by means of a webquest.
A webquest is an enquiry-oriented lesson format in which most, or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The trick is to provide the students with some information to start from and then let them search for the rest of the necessary information on their own. The next step is to have them process the information and produce some result in the form of written or spoken assignments. Both the information provided and expected as well as the final production may include all sorts of formats, types, resources, forms, genres, etc. It will all depend on what the students are expected to learn.
A webquest I have tried and have had quite some success with is Zunal, an online webquest maker providing all the necessary elements for an interactive web-based enquiry-oriented lesson.
The special thing about Zunal is that the basic layout, structure and elements are already there. It is up to the author to decide how many of the elements shall fit the objectives of the lesson and be included in the final format. Every segment of the webquest can be created separately and include various forms of information.
For instance, the teacher can provide links to online resources or include a selection of documents the students are expected to read. Furthermore, a template can be provided for a writing assignment, audio/ visual material can be added, vocabulary can be added with direct links to dictionaries explaining the item. Finally, an evaluation rubrics can be added and included as a reference for the students to follow when completing their writing tasks. The rubrics can outline the expected criteria and provide the level of expected performance by clearly stating the way a certain criterion, if completed to a certain amount, will be assessed.
A webquest my students do for their Legal English 2 course is Let's get Tom's job back! The point of this webquest is that the students write a claim containing all necessary legal arguments to get an employee’s job back. The termination of Tom's employment is a result of nepotism in the work place, which means that it is an example of an unfair dismissal. All the details, the background story as well as the instructions are provided in the various sections of the webquest. The students have to work through the separate sections on their own, read the supporting material posted in the relevant segment, write the claim by using the provided template, submit the claim to me per e-mail and present the case in front of the entire group acting as if they were in a real employment tribunal.
A webquest like this takes more time than some usual lesson. The format is obviously demanding which is why the students encounter certain difficulties especially in the segment when they have to complete the independent research. That is why they are allowed to contact me during the realisation period and ask for additional explanations. However, I do not offer precise instructions how to complete the separate tasks, I just direct their attention to the segments, I remind them of the fact they have to open the segments in the provided order and follow the steps as indicated, I suggest they download the template and the reading material, etc.
A thing I have learned about students in general is that they tend to be terribly impatient with online material. Once they are allowed to browse the Internet on their own, they start opening the links almost randomly and then they forget to return to the steps at the beginning, or they miss some important intermediary task. That is why the teacher should be there to provide some support and help the students develop some work procedure, follow some order, stay within a certain framework, etc. An important aspect of autonomous learning is making the right choices at the right moment. A rather wrong choice would be to ignore the supplied material and search for other resources. Some students opt for that and start meandering and roaming the Internet losing thus every sense of direction. It is almost as if they think that they will prove to be more autonomous if they search independently and more elaborately ignoring thereby the provided instruction. That is why teachers should constantly remind them to stick to the assignment at least at the early stages of their development. Once they develop the competence to make independent choices, the research will follow a certain path and they will not waste any time wandering around pages they do not need at all.
Another thing I have noticed after applying the webquest about Tom's unfair dismissal with two generations of students is that they do not like the reading material. In the section "Your task in detail", there are two online documents providing basic information on the issue of unfair dismissal and the tribunal procedure resulting from it. The students are expected to read these carefully and base their claim (a template is provided) on the information they gather. Some of them ignore the two resources provided and get frustrated when their claim does not meet the criteria presented in the section "Evaluation". It is almost as if they do not want to make use of the autonomy offered to them as it is a lot more effort than when they are given some material they are expected to analyse and reproduce in some way or the other. Well, no surprise at all, is it?
A general conclusion would be that students have to be directed to autonomous learning all the time whether they like it or not. And it is the teacher's job to assist them on that way.
A webquest like this takes more time than some usual lesson. The format is obviously demanding which is why the students encounter certain difficulties especially in the segment when they have to complete the independent research. That is why they are allowed to contact me during the realisation period and ask for additional explanations. However, I do not offer precise instructions how to complete the separate tasks, I just direct their attention to the segments, I remind them of the fact they have to open the segments in the provided order and follow the steps as indicated, I suggest they download the template and the reading material, etc.
A thing I have learned about students in general is that they tend to be terribly impatient with online material. Once they are allowed to browse the Internet on their own, they start opening the links almost randomly and then they forget to return to the steps at the beginning, or they miss some important intermediary task. That is why the teacher should be there to provide some support and help the students develop some work procedure, follow some order, stay within a certain framework, etc. An important aspect of autonomous learning is making the right choices at the right moment. A rather wrong choice would be to ignore the supplied material and search for other resources. Some students opt for that and start meandering and roaming the Internet losing thus every sense of direction. It is almost as if they think that they will prove to be more autonomous if they search independently and more elaborately ignoring thereby the provided instruction. That is why teachers should constantly remind them to stick to the assignment at least at the early stages of their development. Once they develop the competence to make independent choices, the research will follow a certain path and they will not waste any time wandering around pages they do not need at all.
Another thing I have noticed after applying the webquest about Tom's unfair dismissal with two generations of students is that they do not like the reading material. In the section "Your task in detail", there are two online documents providing basic information on the issue of unfair dismissal and the tribunal procedure resulting from it. The students are expected to read these carefully and base their claim (a template is provided) on the information they gather. Some of them ignore the two resources provided and get frustrated when their claim does not meet the criteria presented in the section "Evaluation". It is almost as if they do not want to make use of the autonomy offered to them as it is a lot more effort than when they are given some material they are expected to analyse and reproduce in some way or the other. Well, no surprise at all, is it?
A general conclusion would be that students have to be directed to autonomous learning all the time whether they like it or not. And it is the teacher's job to assist them on that way.
