What Learner Autonomy Looks Like to Me

On Saturday 17 October, Jennie Wright and I facilitated a workshop about Learner Autonomy at an ELTAS event in Stuttgart. Neither of us had been scheduled to speak that day. OUP's Heather Buchanan had been waylaid by a cancelled flight in Leeds and couldn't make it. Rather than cancel, ELTAS asked if I had something I could do with group rather than cancel the whole afternoon. Knowing a little about learner autonomy, primarily based on the 6 weeks' teaching I had done at Bristol uni this summer, I agreed to give it a go.

Having  thrown some guiding ideas and flip charts together in the 2 hours before heading off to Stuttgart, my approach was to rely on the combined knowledge of the group. Luckily, Jennie was able to access material from a full 8-hour workshop she'd previously designed, for use after the break.

In my enthusiasm, I did the usual thing of jumping in and "winging" it. Now I want to back up a little and fill in the missing gaps - as much for myself as for the participants at the workshop who patiently and kindly went along with me.

The Socrative quiz we did was made of questions behind which I had specific intentions. Primarily, to think about how we prefer to learn ourselves; then to think what might be our learners' preferences. The one question which most people couldn't fully answer was about memorisation strategies.

Q5.  When you are a learner, which revision strategies work best for you?
A State-dependent Recall
B Chunking
C The method of Loci
D Interacting images

 Here are the definitions for each strategy, FYI:

a.   State-dependent Recall  It’s easier to remember something if you can put yourself in the place where you learned it – you might remember something funny in the classroom for example, or eating something strange etc)

b.   Chunking Take small pieces of information and group them into large units – useful to help remember lots of info

c.   The method of Loci mnemonic device – mentally remember items in association with physical location – placing concepts on a map, eg following a path/route or rooms in a house

d.   Interacting images – easier to remember something if it interacts with something

e.   Priming – a stimulus – reading about a topic before writing

f.    Forgetting curve – graph showing how much is lost from the memory unless information is reviewed consciously and regularly

 
I presented socrative as an example of a digital learning tool in keeping with the original workshop description. As many of our learners fall into the "digital native" demographic, we want to create an environment in which these learners feel confident.  They will then, presumably, be in a better position to work autonomously. The familiar breeds confidence, right? Which is pretty much what the group came up with:

Throughout my half of the workshop, my intention was to give participants the time and space to think for themselves - to work autonomously. In this spirit, I tried out the World Café format. For those who attended, I leave it up to you to decide how well it worked. From my point of view, there was plenty of movement and discussion and little input from "the teacher".

In researching the topic, I came across a blog in which these sentiments were reiterated. Here, from that blog, is a nice summation of what I was aiming to get across:


"Thinking is the key to learning. While teachers can do many things for their students, there is one inescapable fact, they cannot think for them." ~Jim Ahern. In the foreign language classroom, teachers can provide all the daily necessities for learning. Thus, they can lead their "horses" to rich sources. However, the students themselves are the ones to be professionally accountable for developing a willingness to learn (Mohanty, 2010). 

For more about Jennie, or to request a copy of her material from the workshop, go here.
To get hold of a copy of the post-workshop handout I created, email me directly. Or ask ELTAS.

OUP Prize Draw at end of workshop - I won a set of books!