How about Self-Directed Learning?

In recent days, I was reflecting about learning in our current situation. As the Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting many facets of our lives, one of the areas that are affected is the physical classroom/lecture hall setting of the education sector.

Disruption of the education sector also has brought about other chain effects on the family life. Many families suddenly need more electronic devices like tablets, laptop or PC for the Online Learning needs of the household. Suddenly the 100Mbps broadband at home seems to come to a crawl when parents and children need the bandwidth for Online Learning and other functions like working online, attending virtual meeting, streaming of music, streaming of videos and online gaming. I believe many would identify with the whole drama of apportioning electronic devices and network bandwidth in the household - which can be quite emotional at times. Due to the need for social distancing during this pandemic season, many learning institutions has turned to Online Learning. I am not an educationist to offer formal academic comments on the merits, issues and challenges of Online Learning approach. I am looking at the Online Learning from the perspective as Life-Long Learner and as a parent. I still can wrap my mind around the idea Online Learning for secondary & tertiary level students or adult learners. However, I am still trying to understand the Online Learning process for younger children. Online Learning is not something new that sprang out during the Covid-19 lockdown. Many online courses had been offered through MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) since many moons ago. Online Learning Course offers the convenience of learning anywhere and anytime, provided the student has Internet access. Interaction between teachers and students proves to be challenging for Online Learning Course. Some institutions required their student to meet together in physical classroom setting for several times along the progress of the Online Course. This is probably not possible for the current situation. Some institutions has utilized Online/Virtual Meeting apps (Zoom or Google Meet) to offer the interaction component. Online Learning also need to grapple with the area of assessment and evaluation of the student’s learning outcomes. Are the assessment employed effective in gauging the learning progress of students? Ultimately, can the knowledge gained through Online Learning be transferred to real life setting? Anyway, there is no perfect approach that can tick off all the need and benefit boxes. While we are learning and assimilating the “new normal” of Online Learning, perhaps we can further explore the idea of Self-Directed Learning approach. The following is the definition given by Malcolm Knowles, directly quoted from the www.infed.org website (https://infed.org/mobi/self-directed-learning/):

In its broadest meaning, self-directed learning describes a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes. (Knowles, 1975, p. 18)

In view of our current situation, Self-Directed Learning seems to be an attractive option to be explored for our learning approach. However, we need to bear in mind that the Self-Directed Learning approach might not be suitable or appropriate for all students and context.