This is a complex but a useful educational question. The assessment methods you will use have to go in parallel with the curruculum design and the teaching/learning you are using. This will definitely needs a method that endoreses active learning and possibly small group learning. The design of your curriculum should include in this way strategies to encourage student's cognitive reasoning, collaboration and learning through case senarios. Then you will need to assess the two elements you mentioned - engagement and self-directed learning. You may need to use more than one method to ensure the validity and reliability of your measures. I will come to you with more detail re assessment.

Samy, thanks for the input it is appreciated. I look forward to your next post.

In terms of reliable and valid tool for assessing the impact of teacher practice I cannot recall one although it has been a few years sense I have look at this field. However there are papers looking at students traits and characteristics in relation to self-guided learning. As suggested above, the motives and motivation for individuals to participate in self-guided learning are complex and diverse. Consider the environment in which self-guided learning is taking place e.g. in the classroom as independent learning or remotely as distant learning. I would suspect that a valid tool which covers the scope of your question is likely to be a multifaceted approach. Now consider the reason why the teacher want/ have to implement this approach and at what level of education (primary, secondary, college, university).

During my time in the secondary school classroom.The biggest barrier to success for self-guided learning was the learning skills which the students had (or lack of) and their readiness to engage with this type of approach (this not not really learning). I spent a lot of my time developing the students learning skills so that the students could meaningfully engage with this type of learning rather then the actual self-guided element. Anyway, I produced a framework which may be of interested which I attach.

Research Enquiry Based Learning: A Proposed Framework 2011

Robert, there are some rules in designing the self-directed learning:

First: take the learners' educational level and readiness for self-directed learning into consideration. For those in the first level, you may provide a list of resources showing the title, the chapter, and even the page number. You may include several textbooks, articles, electronic resources etc. As the learners master self-directed learning skills say in year two, you may just provide the title of the textbooks or other resources, then in year three, you leave the learners to search for their resources. You should leave it open to them. As you see some students may be able to find their resources outside the scope you have given, but these are a few students.

Second: when students come back to discuss their self-directed learning findings, they should not provide them as powerpoint, but construct the knowledge as a small group on the whiteboard with the help of a scribe. There is a big difference between presentation, and constructing knowledge as tables, diagrams, mechanisms, concept maps through collaboration and sharing experience.

Third: I always see the material that the students prepared for self-directed learning (of each student) and what they come with as a group on the whiteboards as a precious material that can be used in the assessment. This material can be assessed through peer assessment and self-assessment.

Fourth: In one of my studies (not yet completed) I found a significant difference between what the students reported on a questionnaire about their self-directed learning, and the quality of the material (self-directed material) they have prepared as an answer to the learning issues. There an exaggeration in the ranking made by the students in the questionnaires.

Fifth: Self-directed learning in PBL offers the opportunity to assess the students (on an individual basis, via the material prepared by each student), and the group performance (the content they created on the whiteboard). Assessing these two types of data, together with recording the sessions and the interactions as it is the case in PBL could give you a better idea of their self-directed learning.

There are good articles on this area in medical education journals such as Medical Education, Academic Medicine, Medical Teacher, BMC Medical Education, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, and Advances in Health Sciences Education.

I will follow-up with a few articles on this topic.

I agree with Campbell that one of the biggest obstacles even for me in promoting self-directed learning and engagement is the students learning skills. When we talk about engagement, there are different types. See if my paper is of any use for you in terms of engagement tools.

I don’t know if this helps but I have some experience of the Adaptive Learning platform produced by Area9 (see https://area9learning.com/). It was developed by two medical doctors from Denmark and is now used by the publisher MCgraw Hill. It applies a pedagogical approach rather than a technical one to self-directed and distance learning.

Most people are attracted to it because if the way the teaching quickly and automatically adapts to the student's abilities but the platform also collects data on students' interaction, engagement and performance. These can be used to refine course content and teaching methodology etc. As with most tools, its effectiveness depends on the skill of the user. In this case, that would be course design, review analysis etc. In the right hands and with the friendly and helpful support of the Area9 team, I believe it can be a very effective method to deliver learning and assess student engagement and performance.

I would encourage you to use my book titled Navigating Problem-Based Learning, published by Churchill Livingstone, Elsevier, 2008. Please refer to the chapter on self-directed learning, you will find simple approaches described for students to develop their self-directed learning skills. See the link below

https://www.elsevier.com/books/navigating-problem-based-learning/azer/978-0-7295-7827-1

Hello Samy,

Thank you very much for this, I look forward to reading your work and incorporating it into my research!

I have been thinking about employability as metacognition rather than the functional (non-cognitive) issue measured by governments! The work is termed employability thinking and engages students as partners with a 'create your future' focus rather than 'employability 101'. It is all free to faculty and students and I welcome additions! Dawn

https://developingemployability.edu.au/about/

http://student.developingemployability.edu.au/

Hi Dawn,

Many thanks for sharing. These resources seem very good, easy to use and well thought out. How much help or advice do students generally need from lecturers or career advisors to get the best out of the resources you have provided?

Regards,

Afzal

Hi, the resources are self-explanatory but of course what we really want is an integrated approach. I recommend that faculty follow a 10-step process as this engages our careers professionals and ensures support for teachers. The process is at the link below, but please ask if you would like help! Dawn https://developingemployability.edu.au/getting-started-10-step-employability-process/

Hi.. take the students educational level and readiness for self-directed learning, you can use Self Directed Learning Questioner

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