Menig schoolkind houdt zich hier dagelijks mee bezig: het vervoegen van werkwoorden en het plaatsen in de verleden en de voltooid verleden tijd. Is het niet bijzonder om het werkwoord leren in de verleden en de voltooid verleden tijd te plaatsen als de tendens in de huidige samenleving is om een leven lang te leren? Heeft iemand ooit gesproken over een Geleerde Organisatie in plaats van een Lerende Organisatie? Dit taaltechnische fenomeen staat naar mijn mening haaks op de huidige nadruk van kennisontwikkeling, waarbij ontwikkeling door mij vertaald wordt met leren. Een vorm van leren die mijn speciale belangstelling heeft is het concept van Self-Directed Learning.
Higher education is making increasing demands on students’ learner-agency and self-directed learning. What exactly are learner agency and self-directed learning? Why are they important? And what does it take? The aim of the five questions and answers on this poster is to support a common language and to be used as conversation starters when you want to discuss learner-agency and self-directed learning.
Present-day students are expected to be lifelong learners throughout their working life. Higher education must therefore prepare students to self-direct their learning beyond formal education, in real-life working settings. This can be achieved in so-called hybrid learning configurations in which working and learning are integrated. In such a learning configuration, learning is typically trans-boundary in nature and embedded in ill-structured, authentic tasks. The goal of this study is to develop a set of design guidelines for an intervention that would strengthen students’ capacity for self-directed lifelong learning within a hybrid learning configuration, a one-semester elective course at a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands. The research approach was educational design research. An intervention was designed, implemented and evaluated during two iterations of the course. Evaluation methods included interviews with students and the course facilitator, questionnaires, and students’ logs and reports. We developed five intervention design guidelines that will promote self-directed learning. Our conclusion is that the intervention was usable and effective: at a basic level, the students did develop their capacity for self-directed lifelong learning. Further research is needed to investigate conditions for realizing higher levels of proficiency in self-directed lifelong learning throughout the curriculum and beyond.
