Autonomous Learning Approach Research Articles

Autonomous Learning Model in Teaching Speaking Skills at Indonesian EFL Classroom

This study looks into the autonomous learning approach that teachers in Indonesian EFL classrooms use to teach English speaking. This study uses a case study approach, utilizing a descriptive qualitative approach. The participants in the case are fourteen third-semester students and a lecturer at the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Iqra, Buru. In-depth interviews and classroom observations were used to gather the data in order to determine its objective orientation. As the common thread of the research gathered through these two instruments, the data were analyzed using the four stages of the descriptive analysis developed by Miles, Huberman, and Saldana (2014): gathering, condensing, showing, and drawing conclusions. The results showed that the lecturer used four autonomous learning strategies to teach speaking skills: setting clear, contextual goals; using effective teaching techniques such as describing people, journal-reviewing, and storytelling; motivating students to be independent and confident; and incorporating technology like Google Meet, Zoom, and YouTube to facilitate speaking instruction. This research draws a conclusion that using an autonomous learning paradigm improved student engagement and enthusiasm with the process of learning how to speak English.

Unveiling the dynamic connection between a socially responsible activity and English learning motivation at a Taiwanese university

ABSTRACT Purpose In response to the growing acknowledgment of University Social Responsibility as an integral component of higher education, this study aimed to explore the relationship between a socially responsible initiative, Happy Reading Worms, and the motivation for English learning, as well as awareness of social responsibility among Taiwanese university freshmen. The study adopted an autonomous learning approach with the goal of boosting students’ motivation to learn English. Design In Fall 2022, 58 university freshmen in a General English course participated in Happy Reading Worms at a local hospital. Their involvement included reading English stories and offering companionship to child patients. The students received training in empathy, story-reading skills, and guidelines for interacting with child patients during the four two-hour sessions. Assessment involved two scales measuring community engagement awareness and English learning motivation, supplemented by one-on-one interviews to further explore students’ experiences. Findings The findings revealed that students recognized the importance and various personal gains associated with community engagement. Students’ satisfaction with their psychological needs was associated with an extrinsically motivated approach to learning English. Furthermore, in the assessment of students’ perception of USR, the category ‘Listening to Others’ stood out, with female students exhibiting a significantly higher inclination than their male counterparts. However, the examination of their motivation in learning English indicated a negative association with their community engagement, suggesting the intricate nature of motivation. Originality/ value The findings offered valuable insights into the advantages of incorporating socially responsible activities within the university’s English learning environment, particularly in EFL contexts.

Fostering Environmental Autonomy Support in an English Course for Middle School Learners in Western México

The scope of this study is to observe features of environmental autonomy support and to identify aspects of autonomy. To this end, a case study was designed and implemented in a state school in the western region of Mexico, with the participation of twelve secondary school pupils, ages 12 to 14, who attended a non-required 40-hour course using the autonomous learning approach. A research journal was kept tracking the whole process, gaining knowledge of autonomous learning and examining the phenomenon in a real-life context. The journals were analyzed with the help of Atlas.ti software, and the researcher made inferences from the resulting data, including environmental autonomy support as well as the reactions of the pupils to the autonomous learning process. The analysis of data reveals the language-learning context and its tendency to foster an autonomy-supportive atmosphere. Data seems to cast light on two major issues: the importance of fostering an environment that encourages autonomous learning-related behavior, and the necessity of providing appropriate scaffolding strategies to assist students in their development of autonomous learning. The study provides valuable insights into autonomy support and autonomous learning in education, but its limitations include a small sample size and potential challenges in generalizing findings to broader contexts.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDEPENDENCE TO LEARN: STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING EDUCATIONAL INDEPENDENCE FOR A QUALITY FUTURE

Abstract This article discusses the challenges and opportunities in the context of independent learning, with a focus on strategies for developing educational independence to achieve a quality future. The writing method is literature and content analysis from various academic sources that are relevant to the theme of independent learning and educational independence. These challenges involve paradigm shifts, adaptation to technology, and increased community involvement. In addition, this article also identifies opportunities that can be taken to improve the quality of education, such as the use of technological innovation, responsive curriculum development, and strengthening collaboration between education stakeholders. The strategies proposed in this paper aim to form individuals who are able to take an active role in the learning process, while preparing them to face future demands. Therefore, this paper provides an important contribution to thinking about how to create a learning environment that is empowering, independent, and oriented towards quality results. The results of this paper highlight a number of significant challenges in the transformation of the education system, including a paradigm shift towards a more autonomous learning approach, adaptation to advances in learning technology, and increasing community participation in the educational process.

Effect of Autonomous Learning on University Students’ Academic Motivation

The main objective of this research is to investigate the effect of autonomous learning on university students’ academic motivation at University of the Punjab. This quasi-experimental study was based on two groups of students; the experimental and the control group. In this study, the experimental group of the students were taught through autonomous learning approach. The control group of the study was taught through the traditional teacher directed learning method. Pretest and post-test from both the control and experimental group were conducted to check the level of students’ academic motivation. Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) was used to collect data for the study. Two intact groups/classes (comprising 60 students in total) of undergraduate students, were purposively selected for this study. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze quantitative data. This research showed that there was no significant effect of autonomous learning on students’ academic motivation in Pakistani context. The longitudinal research may need to be conducted from elementary grades so that students may develop habits of autonomous learning and may have better academic motivation in result of autonomous learning.

Learners’ perceptions of the effectiveness of using self-reflection to understand English literary texts: towards an autonomous learning approach in Libya

Teaching learners to reflect on their work has been widely researched within language-learning contexts in higher education. Research has revealed that self-reflection leads to both development in learners’ reading comprehension and lecturers being enabled to write more meaningful corrective feedback on learners’ assignments. Using a collaborative teaching approach at Benghazi university, this research evaluated the effectiveness of using a self-reflection worksheet for understanding short stories based on the perspectives of 19 tertiary Libyan learners and the course lecturers’ feedback.
 The research process involved the learners first reading a short story and answering text comprehension questions and a reflection question in which they commented on their understanding. They were then introduced to the self-reflection worksheet and advised how to use it in their second reading of the same story. This self-reflection worksheet included a section where students added reflections on their understanding following the second reading, supported by the worksheet. Content analysis was used for the qualitative data that investigated the learners’ reflection after their first and second reading. It was also used for staff feedback on the learners’ reflections.
 The findings show the usefulness of using the self-reflection worksheet in supporting the learners’ meaning understanding. It also helped them make positive changes during their second reading of the story. Evidence suggests that using worksheets for reading literary texts is effective in improving levels of reading comprehension. Implications and suggestions for effective teaching practice and future research are provided in this paper.

Learning from the Self-Created Media: Designing the Engineering Students’ ESP Autonomous Learning

Currently, English lecturers of non-English speaking countries in higher institutions are facing heterogeneous classes. There are fortunate students during their high schools who got a chance to sharpen their English skills and others who just rely on their English school teachers. Unaffordable costs or limited facilities or access to learning are some of the factors. The learning material of ESP for Engineering for a heterogeneous class is developed. This R&D used ADDIE approach. This article focuses on the analysis of the first two phases- analysis and design. Analysis of the need of the Engineering students and English lecturers are conducted using instruments of the open questionnaire and interview list which have been validated. While in the design phase, the material is developed using an autonomous learning approach and a task-based approach. Before, continuing to the practicality test, the developed material also has been validated. This material is aimed to support the learning of " Describing a Process" which is one of the topics in ESP in the Engineering Department of Politeknik Negeri Padang. The developed material provides every meaningful task that gives a positive contribution to the students.

Autonomous Tactical Deployment of the UAV Array Using Self-Organizing Swarm Intelligence

This article describes how swarm intelligence can be applied to an array of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for strategic deployment. In emergency or disaster-stricken areas, telecommunications and geospatial surveillance are strictly critical for situational control. Base stations may fail to work due to natural disasters. To be rapidly deployed, lightweight drones with multirotors that provide stability are used as mobile stations. An autonomous learning approach, “self-organizing maps (SOMs),” which can automatically and adaptively coordinate a large array of autonomous drones—self-organizing UAV array—based on requests from end users (EUs) is embedded inside the array. The size and the topology of a UAV array can be dynamically changed in response to various terrains and relocation of EUs. Moreover, with swarm intelligence, the UAV array is capable of reconfiguring its planar topology into a hierarchical one. Such a hierarchical topology divides the entire UAV array into subarrays and creates isolated heterogeneous networks. Thus, the UAV array can cope with diverse situations across geographical barriers by forming a flying ad hoc network.

Thai teachers’ self-assessment and student perceptions on the practice of autonomy

This paper aims to share the classroom observation findings from a study that previously revealed positive beliefs of secondary school teachers and learners in Bangkok regarding various aspects of autonomous learning in the Thai culture of learning. The earlier findings disclosed their beliefs in support of an autonomous learning approach regarding the roles of language teachers and learners, willingness to engage in activities and decision-making relevant to language classroom arrangements both in- and outside the classroom. It is thus worth seeing how these beliefs are translated into practice. This study investigates how teachers self-evaluated their application of autonomous learning in classrooms based on the reflective teaching concept, compared to their students' perception. The sample included 19 teachers and 632 students from 19 secondary schools in Bangkok, who volunteered to complete an evaluation form at the end of the observed lessons. The findings suggest an inconsistency between the teachers’ beliefs and practices. Additionally, they rated their implementation relatively higher than their students. The study sheds light on how teacher educators and policy makers can further assist in reducing barriers so that the practice of autonomous learning in secondary education in Bangkok and in Thailand may become achievable.

Autonomous English language learning aided by an online teaching system

In this study an online teaching system was developed to promote students' autonomous English language learning. An experiment was made between two groups of students a control group using the system and an experimental group not using the system. The result shows that by following the autonomous learning approach supported by the online teaching system, the students in the experimental group improved their abilities in English language skills to a larger extent than the students in the control group. This paper describes the characteristics and functions of the online system, and also discusses the application and effect of the system in a translation course at a college in China.

Using Video Recordings to Facilitate Student Development of Oral Presentation Skills

Using Video Recordings to Facilitate Student Development of Oral Presentation Skills

Learning effective dispatching rules for batch processor scheduling

Batch processor scheduling, where machines can process multiple jobs simultaneously, is frequently harder than its unit-capacity counterpart because an effective scheduling procedure must not only decide how to group the individual jobs into batches, but also determine the sequence in which the batches are to be processed. We extend a previously developed genetic learning approach to automatically discover effective dispatching policies for several batch scheduling environments, and show that these rules yield good system performance. Computational results show the competitiveness of the learned rules with existing rules for different performance measures. The autonomous learning approach addresses a growing practical need for rapidly developing effective dispatching rules for these environments by automating the discovery of effective job dispatching procedures.

Rapid Modeling and Discovery of Priority Dispatching Rules: An Autonomous Learning Approach

Priority-dispatching rules have been studied for many decades, and they form the backbone of much industrial scheduling practice. Developing new dispatching rules for a given environment, however, is usually a tedious process involving implementing different rules in a simulation model of the facility under study and evaluating the rule through extensive simulation experiments. In this research, an innovative approach is presented, which is capable of automatically discovering effective dispatching rules. This is a significant step beyond current applications of artificial intelligence to production scheduling, which are mainly based on learning to select a given rule from among a number of candidates rather than identifying new and potentially more effective rules. The proposed approach is evaluated in a variety of single machine environments, and discovers rules that are competitive with those in the literature, which are the results of decades of research.

Autonomous Learning and the Acquisition of Intercultural Communicative Competence: Some Implications for Course Development

Apart from teaching communicative language competence, foreign-language educationists also consider it a natural pedagogical aim to encourage learners to have an interest in, knowledge about and an opening towards foreign cultures, peoples and countries. This paper outlines some of the key terms and complexities that surround the advocacy of teaching foreign languages for intercultural communicative competence (ICC). It examines some of the issues involved in reconceptualising courses that were originally designed to teach communicative competence in a foreign language, to courses promoting the acquisition of ICC. It discusses criteria for selecting cultural contents and culture-and-language learning tasks, as well as ways to scaffold the ICC learning process. It takes issue with traditional culture-teaching approaches and explains why current societal developments compel us to move away from a teacher-led language-and-culture pedagogy to a student-centred autonomous learning approach.