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Leaning into Learning

Associates - University of The People

UNIV 1001 Online Education Strategies

Instructor Scotty Mclean

May 12th 2020

What is a self-directed learner? What are the essential aspects of self-directed learning?
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A self-directed learner is someone who takes initiative to learn something on their own without

them needing some outside force making them do so. For example, someone who learns how to

paint and actively goes to take a painting course and continues to learn outside of just the

instruction given because they are doing it out of their own interest.

The essential aspects of self-directed learning can be described as “learners identify the resources

needed to learn and be successful, and develop their own strategies for doing so. In this context,

self-directed learners also evaluate the extent to which they achieved their own learning goals.”

(Kchessler). For example, someone who wants to learn about Dungeons and Dragons will go

online or offline and find the books and websites they need to learn the mechanics, they’ll find

people who have played before and online videos about specific D&D subjects and how to run a

campaign or just participate in one, aka the identification of resources and development of

learning strategies. Next, this person would be able to play a campaign session or a one-shot

session and learn from this and be able to evaluate what could be better picks for next time

character and decision wise, thus fulfilling the evaluation and achievement of goals.

What are your two biggest strengths as a student? How will these strengths help you

become a self-directed learner?

My two biggest strengths as a student are my ability to write and my ability to analyze. Writing

involves formatting, word choice, word delivery and text delivery and in the past and somewhat

now this has been a strong suit for me. Writing assignments and discussion posts is easy in some

ways due to me being able to switch between a more casual tone and a slightly more professional

one (although that may be a bit off for this assignment as it will be in a more first person

viewpoint). Analysis I also consider as a strong suit, since I have taken philosophy, theology, and
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several english course classes in the past which require you to really delve into what you’re

reading and be able to make judgements and entire essays sometimes over a single photo as

evidence.

These strengths will help me to become a self-directed learner due to the fact that I can reread

and re-assess my own work while going through it and compare it to works in the past and other

work that I have done for this course itself. Doing so takes into account both my writing abilities

and my analysis because I don’t need to re-read everything multiple times, I can pick out which

parts I need to compare and which parts need re-evaluation in terms of word choice and subject.

What are your two biggest weaknesses as a student? How do these affect your readiness to

be a self-directed learner?

Two of my biggest weaknesses as a student are lacking interest and scheduling. While these two

have gotten better since my time studying at University of the People, there are still

improvements I could be making. Lacking interest is simply because some of the videos and

such don’t seem quite relevant to the subject material, so when taking quizzes and making

discussion posts the videos don’t come up in my mind because they seem so unrelated. While the

Ted talks are interesting, I more often than not look at the chapter we have for the week and

leave the videos to actually watch later which while I’m still getting the information, it’s not a

great idea long-term. Scheduling is also an issue because while I do have one, it’s a bit of a

procrastination schedule since my “work week” starts pretty much halfway through the actual

amount of time given to work on course materials and should anything go wrong in these days

there’s not enough make-up time.

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These affect my readiness as a student because students need to be able to be at least a little

interested in what they’re learning in order to justify continuing with it and schedules are

important to keep you on track, so if the scheduling is off or badly done, this can cause

assignments and work to just completely go undone.

Describe at least three strategies to become a more self-directed learner. How will you hold

yourself accountable for your growth as a learner?

As written by Self-Directed Learning: A Four-Step Process (2020), three strategies to becoming

a more self-directed learner are setting learning goals, engaging in the learning process, and

evaluating learning.

Setting learning goals means setting a standard of what you want to learn, so making sure that

you know going into it what you hope to learn from the course/class/experience and what

milestones would come between reaching those goals.

Engagement simply means keeping yourself active and participating in your learning process, so

that you can better get a grip on what it is you need to know and what you’re actually learning.

Evaluation comes after learning and after reaching milestones, making sure that you are really

actively learning and that the last two steps have gone well and you aren’t just skipping over

them.

Word Count: 804 (Not Including Questions)

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References:

● Kchessler. (n.d.). Educational Planning. Lumen.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-esc-educationalplanning/chapter/self-directed-

learning/.

● Self-Directed Learning: A Four-Step Process. Centre for Teaching Excellence. (2020,

June 17). https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/

teaching-tips/tips-students/self-directed-learning/self-directed-learning-four-step-process.