As my amazing readers know, I have discussed self-directed learning several times over the past month. However, I have not specifically targeted how educators can inspire their students to engage in such behaviour… until now.

In this blog post, I will analyze an article by Arthur L. Costa, Promoting Self-Directed Learning. This article caught my eye as I was scouring the depths of the internet for something juicy to write about. As a University instructor who strives for constant improvement, I welcome any advice on motivating students to jump into the glorious pool of self-directed learning!

Costa focusses on feedback as the primary motivational tool used by educators in self-directed learning. He ranks five forms of feedback, beginning with the most effective measure.

1. Reflective questioning– Asking questions which force learners to reflect on their work and the entire learning environment encourages further development and creativity. Open-ended questions seem to work better so that learners can fully assess the situation for themselves.

2. Nonjudgmental data- An instructor can aid the learning process by collecting and providing useful data which the student may use going forward. This can work well in a presentation situation where data about the presentation or audience can help the student improve going forward.

3. Inferences, causality, and interpretations– The author doesn’t seem overly enthusiastic about this form of feedback, as it “usurps the self-directedness of the students”. This method of feedback involves the teacher determining inferences, causality, and interpretations about a student’s work. This feedback is then provided to the student for their development.

4. Personal opinions and preferences– Expressing an opinion or preference can be useful for building rapport with the student. However, this is a slippery slope to evaluation and/or judgement which can adversely impact the self-directed learning process.

5. Evaluations and judgments– Costa argues that evaluation or judgement has a minimal impact on a student’s learning, since the instructor is acting as “the final arbitrator of what is good or bad”.  Obviously, this is not a great thing when attempting to encourage a self-directed learning system where the student is responsible for his or her own evaluation and development.

I feel that Costa’s first two forms of feedback would work best for me. I have been trying to ask more open-ended questions to my students to get them thinking about where improvements can be made. I find that this works really well on major projects where I ask for an early submission with part of the work done. My feedback is usually in the form of questions posed back to students which are addressed in their final project submission.

Collecting and providing data to students is a new idea to me. It seems like a really interesting and useful form of feedback. I am strongly considering making myself available as a data collector in future presentations, where students can request what they want from me.