Informed Eclecticism in the Design of Self-Access Language Learning Environments

Abstract

Self-access learning environments traditionally received only rudimentary treatment and attention compared to classrooms as many educators presumed that it was a teacher and the instructional models, methods, and approaches that were the greatest mediators in learning. In recent decades, self-access centers and subsequently other self-access learning environments and digital spaces have been burgeoning throughout the world, created primarily with the goal of supporting learner autonomy. However, old classroom-centric learning and design paradigms are sometimes applied to the design of self-access environments despite the relative spatial, temporal, and grouping freedom available. By distancing themselves from the tendency to choose one particular learning paradigm on which to base their designs, as is often the case in instructional design, educators and designers open their designed environments to the possibility of becoming a rich space, informed by numerous and diverse fields, that can account for varied ways of learning and knowing. Looking to other fields to further understand what variables can either catalyze or obstruct various ways of knowing and learning can inform the design, development, support, and management of self-access language learning environments. Drawing on knowledge from a variety of disparate fields, this paper suggests six principles that can be applied in order to augment a wide variety of types of learning in self-access learning environments, and particularly those concerned with language learning.