Learner Autonomy

LangLit
IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61 ISSN 2349-5189
An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

DESIGNING LEARNER AUTONOMY THROUGH INSTRUCTIONAL
TECHNOLOGY IN PROFESSIONAL ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
DR. PRATAP KUMAR DASH

Associate Professor,
Dept. of HSS
C.V. Raman (Autonomous) College of Engineering,
Bhubaneswar
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts at establishing a paradigm design for learner autonomy

by adopting appropriate instructional techniques and technologies basically in
professional academic institutions where technical language learning is
emergent and added with multiple intelligences, life –skills, linguistic,
professional and personality competence related factors. Learner Autonomy
has been a much used phenomena in foreign language education, especially
in relation to lifelong learning skills. It has been considered as a personal
human trait, or as an educational move. This is because autonomy is seen
either (or both) as a means or as an end in education. Besides, what
permeates this study is the belief that 'in order to help learners to assume
greater control over their own learning, it is important to help them to become
aware of and identify the strategies that they already use or could potentially
use. As a matter of fact, befittingly, the blending of instructional techniques
and technologies with learner autonomy helps learners to deal with Problem
Based Learning, Project-based Learning, and Inquiry-based Learning. The
teachers or the administrators of Educational institutes have a role in
designing and facilitating this model for their institutions making the students
ideally involved in real-world scenarios in which they are actively engaged in
critical thinking activities. The paper takes the references of the meta-
cognitive strategies, Bloom’s Taxonomy and other recently developed models
like The Channel Learning and Learning Management Systems (LMS)
befitting to the fields of Learner Autonomy and Instructional Technology to
prepare the paradigm.
Key Words: learner autonomy, instructional technology, multiple intelligences, 21st century
skills, constructivism, cognition and metacognition, language learning and acquisition,
information management system, active learning technology
1. Introduction
1.1 Defining the title
Both the concepts of learner autonomy and instructional technology are the popular and
emerging trends in curriculum design and thereby form a part of study in education. One is
Vol. 6 Issue 1 88 August, 2019

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psychosocial and the other is the blend of both natural and artificial things. These are
however extremely essential for curriculum design. Here, both the concepts have been taken
in a broader arena as leaner autonomy is not only confined to language learning and in the
same way, instructional technology is the basis of education in technology and technology in
education. In this context, the professional academic institutions means the departments in
the Universities and Colleges imparting vocational, technical and professional courses in
agriculture, medicine, engineering, science and technology, management, law and teacher
training programs.
1.2 From Apprenticeship to Didacticism and then to Interaction
The scenario in education has been constantly changing in the shifting paradigm from the
household pedagogy of apprenticeship to universal schooling and then to lifelong learning.
This is a continuous shift from practical skills to disciplinary knowledge and then to how to
learn. These stages can be rephrased in terms of observation to tasking and then to embedded
assessment. This is a serial change from personal bonds to authority figures and then to
computer-mediated interaction.
A ‘one-size-fits-all’ factory model and a one-way broadcast approach to learning are not
applicable anymore. Instead, more real-world problem-solving and internship in real work
settings; allowing mental model building; creating lessons that have an emotional connection
to what is being learned; creating more personalized learning opportunities; and embedding
social learning into lessons including online communication options work better (Kharbach
discussing Collins and Halverson’s Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology). Thus, it
is resolved that learners deserve autonomy through the provision of modern technological
amenities.
2. Research Background
It is found that at the tertiary level, in most of the developing and underdeveloped Asian and
African countries, the students need innovation, freedom of thought, creative work, and
proper channeling of intellectual property. They need the improvement of their Multiple
Intelligences through self induced resources. The teachers and the academic systems should
realize this and set up a timely plan and provide necessary amenities to the students. It is
possible even with existing facilities and indigenous knowledge. The needs of the students
are yet to be analyzed in the context of use and management of knowledge. These days the
students’ expectations are basically: Freedom to choose and express personal views and
individual identities; Customization and personalization; Scrutiny: detailed behind the
analysis; Integrity and openness in interaction; Entertainment and play to be integrated into
work, learning and social life; Collaboration and relationship; Speed in communication,
getting information and responses; and innovation in their lives. Designing learner autonomy
through instructional technology is a viable solution for upbringing the learning input and
proper knowledge management for all round development of the students of such institutes. It
is hoped that this kind of reformation will provide impetus not only to technology driven
education but also remove the so called traditional monotony of teaching and learning.

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3. Aims and objectives
The aim of the paper is to present an experimental design of learner autonomy through
instructional technology for the professional academic institutions basically in the developing
and under-developed countries. This is a modest proposal for reformation in the process of
infrastructure and pedagogic design in order to further the learning output. Here, Instructional
technology is taken as the means; learner autonomy as the process; the professional
institutions are the grounds; and students are the resources. The focus on the product in
improvement of Multiple Intelligences (MI) stands as the background for this process. So, the
paper focuses on the general features of learner autonomy and instructional technology and
then synthesizes both the respective concepts in the light of achievement of target MI among
the students.
4. Problem statement
It is found that in case of overall knowledge and language acquisition, the students are mostly
dependent on the gadgets and the respective subject teachers. But, they do not get sufficient
chance to develop autonomy in their learning which is the dynamic trend of these days. They
seem to be non-involved. As a result, their intellectual possession, creativity and social
knowledge lay waste. They become handicapped about how to utilize and manage their
intellectual property in the context of rapid globalization and intellectualization of the
respective professional fields.
This system needs a radical reformation with enough of involvement of the pedagogy
designers. It is known that when students come for higher study in professional fields, they
hardly succeed to cope up with anything on their own interest or any experiment as we talk of
autonomy because of the pressure of the academic system and teacher dominance in a variety
of diversified ways. Teachers act as the mixed agents of dominant academic manpower and
intellectual informers, sometimes as agents making the students exam-oriented only. In most
cases, experiment is impossible and they come out without any innovative common agenda or
notion of teaching and learning. Moreover, sometimes, the volatile national administrative
decisions and policy making cannot stick to a goal and result-oriented academic achievement.
There may be an air against learner autonomy mainly because teachers are ill-prepared or
reluctant to free students from teacher dependence. Although it is not a smooth thought for
the so called teachers to change their role from purveyor of information to counselor and
manager of learning resources and let the learners solve their problems, still then they have to
rethink. Such a transition from teacher-control to learner-control is fringed with difficulties
but it is mainly in relation to the former (no matter how unpalatable this may sound) that the
latter finds its expression.
5. Literature Review
In the context of the focus of the present paper, the following relevant writings are available
for review.

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Walter McKenzie (2005) in his Multiple Intelligences and Instructional Technology is of the
opinion that designing instructional strategy on the basis of Howard Gardner’s paradigm of
Multiple Intelligences as one of the 21st century skills can cater to the need of education. It
can fulfill the need of the day in the respective fields of IT skills, Information Literacy Skills,
Problem-solving skills, flexibility and creativity.
In the Handbook of Metacognition and Education (2009), it has been discussed that for
students of technology, learner autonomy involves the activities like ‘self-regulated learning’,
‘students’ making use of several metacognitive strategies’, ‘learning in context and modify
their autonomous aspects related their needs’ are some of the highlights. (Witherspoon p.319)
Jochem et.al (2004) opine that the current trend of learning as they name it ‘complex
learning’, as a part of 21st century skills is an outcome of coordination of constituent skills,
knowledge and attitudes into professional competencies. They outline that the students of
science and technology must develop problem-solving, critical thinking and metacognitive
skills such as learning to learn, self-regulation and self-assessment.
In the above review, it is found that mostly teachers and researchers in this field are still to
conceive of establishing a logical bridge between learner autonomy and instructional strategy
for technical and professional students which we are going to initiate.
6. Significance of the Study
The paper attempts at a scientific and specific suggestion for reformation and improvement in
the current teaching-learning system in the professional academic institutions basically in the
developing and underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. It is because most of the
institutions in such countries hardly establish patterns for tertiary level education with their
respective indigenous, natural, technical and intellectual resources. Then, with the increasing
importance of the tech-savvies, an up-to-date instructional technology must be adopted
providing learner autonomy with existing infrastructure exclusively in the professional and
technical institutions. In this context, the suggestions have been made in the paper to design
curriculum keeping learner autonomy, instructional technology with a supporting domain of
multiple intelligences which must bring about an effective curriculum for them.
7. Defining Learner Autonomy
The concepts of learner autonomy have gained momentum, and have become a much
discussed caption within the context of education specifically and are extended to learning in
general too. It goes without saying that this is a shift of responsibility from teachers to
learners and it does not exist in a vacuum, rather it is the result of a concatenation of changes
to the curriculum itself towards a more learner-centred learning. What is more, this reshaping,
so to say, of teacher and learner roles has been conducive to a radical change in the age-old
distribution of power and authority that used to plague the traditional classroom. Cast in a
new perspective and regarded as having the 'capacity for detachment, critical reflection,
decision-making, and independent action' (Little 1991: 4). Thus, learners are autonomous
learners, and expected to assume greater responsibility for, and take charge of, their own
learning. However, learner autonomy does not mean that the teacher becomes redundant;

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abdicating his/her control over what is transpiring in the language learning process. Learner
autonomy is a perennial dynamic process amenable to 'educational interventions' (Candy
1991), rather than a static product, a state, which is reached once and for all. Besides, this
focuses on the assumption of providing learners a greater control over their own learning. It is
necessary to help them to become careful of and sort out the potential strategies.
7.1 The Features of Learner Autonomy
Learner autonomy in general propagates the following features:
 for situations in which learners study entirely on their own;
 for a set of skills which can be learned and applied in self-directed learning;
 for an inborn capacity which is suppressed by institutional education;
 for the exercise of learners' responsibility for their own learning;
 for the right of learners to determine the direction of their own learning.(Benson and
Voller 1997:2 quoted in Thanasoulas 2000)
It is noteworthy that autonomy can be thought of in terms of a departure from education as a

traditional social process, as well as in terms of redistribution of power attending the
construction of knowledge and the roles of the participants in the learning process. The
relevant literature is filled with a number of overlapping definitions of learner autonomy such
as 'independence', 'awareness', 'self-direction', and ‘andragogy’ etc. In David Little's terms,
learner autonomy is 'essentially a matter of the learner's psychological relation to the process
and content of learning--a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and
independent action' (Little 1991: 4). It is not something done to learners; therefore, it is far
from being another teaching method (ibid.). More specifically, it qualifies as an autonomous
learner when he/she independently chooses aims and purposes and sets goals; chooses
materials, methods and tasks; exercises choice and purpose in organizing and carrying out the
chosen tasks; and chooses criteria for evaluation.
To all intents and purposes, the autonomous learner takes a (pro-) active role in the learning
process, generating ideas and availing himself of learning opportunities, rather than simply
reacting to various stimuli of the teacher. This reasoning operates within, and is fitted upon
the theory of constructivism. He is not one to whom things merely happen; he is the one who,
by his own volition, causes things to happen. Learning is seen as the result of his own self-
initiated interaction with the world. Psychologically, it carries forth the attributes of cognitive
and metacognitive strategies on the part of the learner, motivation, attitudes, and knowledge
about language learning, i.e., a kind of metalanguage.
7.2 Instructional Technology
Instructional Technology is the problem analysis, solution design, development,

implementation, management, and evaluation of instructional processes and resources to
improve learning and performance in education and at work (Whelan 2005 citing Reiser).

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There are various definitions and explanations related to Instructional Technology and some
of them contradict too. However, it is a growing field of study which uses technology as a
means to solve educational challenges, both in the classroom and in distance learning
environments. Instructional technology consists of two major parts: one is teaching
technology and the other is learning technology.
In education, instructional technology is "the theory and practice of design, development,

utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning," according
to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Definitions and
Terminology Committee (Quoted in Molanda 2003). It is often referred to as a part of
educational technology but the use of these terms has changed over the years. Educational
technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving
performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and
resources." While instructional technology covers the processes and systems of learning and
instruction, educational technology includes other systems used in the process of developing
human capability.
In this context, it is pertinent enough to focus on the teaching-learning systems in the

professional academic institutions which are mostly supported by science and technology. In
the last 150 years, the phonograph, radio, film, tape recorders, television, and the computer
have all played their role in language learning and acquisition of knowledge. Computer
technology incorporates and remediates all of the foregoing media, and it has become
integrated into people’s daily lives in industrialized societies.
In general, the rapid spread of participatory tools and sites facilitating social networking,
interactive game playing, collaborative writing and editing, and multimodal production
provide opportunities for new kinds of social encounters, new kinds of communities, and new
kinds of learning environments. There are a number of non-digital as well as digital tools
and technologies already existing to provide support to the learners. In non-digital
technologies, there are a number of things which can be used as tools in learning through
technology. They are verbal pencils, pens, worksheets, textbooks, newspapers, magazines,
typewriters, microphones, logical cuisenaire rods, unifix cubes, tangrams, measuring cups,
measuring scales, rulers, and yardsticks, slide rules, calculators, visual picture books, art
supplies, chalkboards, dry erase boards, overhead projectors, slide projectors, TVs, VCRs,
cameras, video cameras, kinesthetic construction tools, kitchen utensils, screws, levers,
wheels and axles, physical education equipment, musical pattern blocks, puzzles,
phonographs, headphones, tape players, tape recorders, Intrapersonal gadgets, diaries,
surveys, voting machines, learning center, interpersonal post-it notes, greeting cards,
laboratories, telephones, walkie-talkies, intercoms, mail, stage dramas, classic literature,
classic philosophy, and simulation games.
In digital technologies, there are verbal keyboards, electronic mail, speech recognition
devices, text bridges, logical graphing calculators, FTP clients, gophers, search engines,
visual monitors, digital cameras, camcorders, scanners, kinesthetic mouse, joysticks, CD-
ROM discs, CD-ROM players, intrapersonal online forms, real-time projects, interpersonal
chats, message boards, instant messengers, naturalist floppy drives, file managers, semantic
mapping tools, virtual reality, virtual communities, simulations are available.

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There are enough of provision to make use of internet in UpldCourseMat, DiscForum,
FYIEmail, Images, Videos ReservRead, AudioOrPodcst, RecLectures, Dropbox
RelatedLinks, EarlyEval, eProject, RSSFeeds, ClassWiki ClassBlog, InterSyllabus, Internet
Search, Office Suite Skills, Social Media, Filtering and assessing Web content, Typing Skill,
Staying secure and safe online, Back up Data or Plan B.
8. The General Scenario of Professional Academic Institutions
The professional or so to say the vocational, technical and job-oriented institutions or

university departments are facing tough challenges and running through competitions for the
improvement of their infrastructure and quality teaching. Many of them are equipped with
well-developed labs, workshops, gadgets and machineries which are technologically
enhanced. They have academic tie-ups with other institutes internationally for academic and
intellectual exchange programs. Continuous assessment of the process and product is going
on. The students in such institutions are highly ambitious and target-oriented. They want
excellence in their respective fields and willing to contribute their intellectual properties
whenever they get chance. In addition, they want all round development of personality with
the knowledge of professional ethics, human values and problem-solving strategies.
Basically, in the non-English speaking countries, they are keen on developing expressive and
bilingual competence with global exposure. They want a synthesis in both their natural and
artificial intelligence. Still then, some of these institutes cannot maintain the required profile
for many reasons. Designing learner autonomy in a systematic and long cherished target
through instructional technology in all these must take the system of teaching and learning a
step forward.
9. Designing Learner Autonomy through Instructional Technology in Institutions
Designing learner autonomy through instructional technology must bring about the three
things. The first, associated with psycholinguistics that is information processing approaches
to language acquisition. The second, associated with discourse analytic and anthropological
approaches to language socialization and the third, language ecology which attempts to
encompass the full complexity of the relationships and processes involved in learning to live
in one or more languages and cultures.
There are different bases for learning styles and strategies named as Active Learning
Technologies coming under this. They are, Problem Based Learning, Project- based
Learning, and Inquiry-based Learning, Guided-task-centered strategy, learner-centered
approach, are the active ways coming under Instructional technologies used to facilitate
learning. These aim at engaging learners in critical thinking activities. The only thing is the
process that students are encouraged to employ is considered to be a technology. Classic
examples of technologies used by teachers and Educational Technologists include Bloom's
Taxonomy and Instructional Design.
10. Learning Strategies
The designing of curriculum for the learning strategies should take into the theoretical
rationales of learner autonomy linked with instructional technology. As discussed by

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Thanasoulas (2000) [citing Cook 1993:114-115], it is observed that the learning strategies are
the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or
retain new information. Learning strategies are mental steps or operations that learners use to
learn a new language and to regulate their efforts to do so. To a marginal extent, the strategies
and learning styles that someone adopts may partly reflect personal preference rather than
innateness.
In addition, the cognitive strategies like repetition, when imitating others' speech; resourcing,
i.e., having recourse to dictionaries and other materials; translation, that is, using their mother
tongue as a basis for understanding and/or producing the target language; note-taking;
deduction, i.e., conscious application of L2 rules; contextualization, when embedding a word
or phrase in a meaningful sequence; transfer, that is, using knowledge acquired in the L1 to
remember and understand facts and sequences in the L2; inferencing, when matching an
unfamiliar word against available information (a new word etc); question for clarification,
when asking the teacher to explain, etc should be taken into account.
The metacognitive strategies like directed attention, when deciding in advance to concentrate
on general aspects of a task; selective attention, paying attention to specific aspects of a task;
self-monitoring, i.e., checking one's performance as one speaks; self-evaluation, i.e.,
appraising one's performance in relation to one's own standards; self-reinforcement,
rewarding oneself for success etc. must be taken into account.
It is observed that both learner autonomy and instructional technology foster the important
factors like learner attitudes and motivation, and self-esteem; easy-to-access course materials;
wide participation; improved student writing; and subjects made easier to learn.
11. The Instructional Management System and Development of Multiple Intelligences

(MI)
While designing learner autonomy, as a part of Instructional Technology, both IM system

and MI should be taken into consideration because it has its basic element that learning
materials can be broken down to their simplest elements. For example, in IM, we can have
thinking of a learning object as a chunk of learning content. It would likely never be the
entire program or module. A group of learning objects would make up a program or module.
Developers talk about the granularity of the learning object – how small it can be. Learning
objects can take the form of any type of media that can be digitized and sent across the
Internet. This opens up a wide range of materials to the instructional designer – video, print,
textbooks, magazines, slides, QuickTime movies, case studies, collaborative activities, e-
mail, Web pages, telephone, and any other medium that has yet to be developed. Each
learning object will have a meta-data tag that defines its properties. For example, the meta-
data tag would contain the name of the learning object, the creator, type of file, interactivity
of the content, grade level, cost, copyright information, and appropriateness for types of
learning styles in addition to other information that the author may provide.
It promotes self-directed and collaborative learning; the use of facilitated learning by faculty;
and new methods to meet new learning needs. Inculcating learner autonomy through
instructional technology is proportionately related to the improvement of MI among the

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students. It supports Information Technology Skills; Information Literacy Skills; Problem-
Solving Skills; Collaboration Skills; Flexibility; and Creativity. As observed, the
technological association of available tools and gadgets can bring about a development in
Multiple Intelligences as stated below. While designing learner autonomy through
instructional technology, the components of MI must also be kept at target. The design must
fulfill the verbal, logical, visual, kinesthetic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist
and existential needs. It should also focus on the dimension of artificial intelligence which is
important in the context of ability to deal with machines carrying out functions that are
normally associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning, correcting, making self-
improvements and learning through experience.
12. The Responsibility of the Teachers
The role of the teacher in designing and executing the curriculum is the actual process. By the
way, the 21st century teachers are characterized by certain holistic and student centered
features, some of them are summarized below. Teachers are the risk takers, the collaborators,
and the models. The teachers' job is not just instilling information in students minds though
instilling is not a proper term to use, but they are also there to give the exemplary model of
how the lifelong, learner should be. Students are very much influenced by their teachers'
behaviors. Therefore, the 21st century teachers need to model several characteristics such as:
Reflective thinking and practice, Tolerance, Coexistence, Affection, love, tenderness, Love of
technology and digital information, global awareness, the leader, the visionary, the learner,
the communicator, and the adaptor.
Different as they are in the modes of learning, teachers should always make their teaching
styles adaptive to the new curriculum requirements; the emerging web technologies; the
various age groups and abilities; the new dynamic teaching experiences.
13. Conclusion
Learner autonomy is vast and varied. It is the responsibility of the intellectual and teachers to
utilize various innovative skills under this in different contexts. It is just like the creator has
left the earth for us to explore on our own and find out our places, persons and
responsibilities and possibilities. Similarly, Instructional Technology is two-fold. It is both
technologies in instruction and instructions in technology. Quoting Robert Reiser, Whelan
(2005) writes:
. …. distinction between the technological processes and the
actual physical media is important. For Reiser, the “soft”
technologies of analysis, design, development, and management
are what make instructional technology interesting, much more so
than the ephemeral, ever evolving hardware and software tools
that instructional technologists use in their craft.
Designing learner autonomy through instructional technology is one of the most useful ways
for obtaining successful output in providing quality education. It is of great benefit for
distance and blended learning, intercultural online encounters, and community participation
too. As a part of the design, students can be given a plethora of ways to connect and reach out

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and find other learners who have that missing piece of information. Even in an innovative
way, on a Buddhist ideology, Cheon (2004) makes a modest suggestion to include meditation
as an instructional technology.
REFERENCES
Books
1. Azevedo, Roger & A.M.Witherspoon.(2009). “Self-regulated Learning with
Hypermedia”, D.J. Hacker et.al. (Edited) Handbook of Metacognition in Education,
New York: Routledge.
2. Candy (1991). Self-direction for Lifelong Learning, California: Jossey-Bass.
3. Jochem, W. et.al. (2004). “Introduction”, Integrated E-learning: Implication for
Pedagogy, Technology and Organization (Ed.), New York: Routledge Falmer.
4. Kharbach, M. Rethinking the Teaching and Learning Skills in the Age of Technology,
www.educatorstechnology.com.
5. Little, D. (1991). Learner Autonomy: Definitions, Issues and Problems, Dublin:
Authentik.
6. Mckenzie, Walter. (2008). Multiple Intelligences and Instructional Technology,
Washington DC: International Society for Technology in Education.
7. Molenda, M. (2003). “Instructional Technology”, submitted to be published in
Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, CA.
Articles
1. Merrill, M.D.(2001). “A Task-centered Instructional Strategy”, Journal of Research
in Technology in Education, 40(1), xx-xxx.
2. Thanasoulas, D. (2000). “What is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered?”
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol.vi, No.11, November, http://iteslj.org.
3. Whelan, R. (2005). “Instructional Technology: A Look at Past, Present and Future
Trends”, Connect: Information Technology at NYU, Spring/Summer.


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LangLit

IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61 ISSN 2349-5189

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

DR. PRATAP KUMAR DASH

This paper attempts at establishing a paradigm design for learner autonomy

1.1 Defining the title

Vol. 6 Issue 1 88 August, 2019

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

1.2 From Apprenticeship to Didacticism and then to Interaction

Vol. 6 Issue 1 89 August, 2019

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

Vol. 6 Issue 1 90 August, 2019

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

6. Significance of the Study

7. Defining Learner Autonomy

Vol. 6 Issue 1 91 August, 2019

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

7.1 The Features of Learner Autonomy