Guidelines and strategies for fostering and enhancing self-directed online learning

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to provide practical instructional design strategies to foster and enhance learners’ online self-directed learning skills and abilities; especially when accessing massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of open educational resources and OpenCourseWare (OCW). In addition to attempting to understand self-directed online learning, a series of studies was conducted to explore how to motivate learners and enhance students’ self-management and self-monitoring skills in MOOCs. This article offers 15 practical guidelines for fostering learners’ self-directed online learning (SDOL) based on the authors’ past research, including extensive literature reviews, surveys, dozens of MOOC instructor and learner interviews, and many course content analyses. Detailed explanations and examples are provided to help readers understand each of the 15 individual strategies. It is hoped that these instructional design guidelines will be adopted by instructional designers of MOOCs as well as practitioners in their MOOC teaching practices.