Page 37 - Campus Technology, August/September 2017

C-Level View
Self-Directed Learning: Exploring the Digital Opportunity
Following up on last month’s column, Gardner Campbell considers the role of self-directed learning in higher education.
By Mary Grush
In “Informing the Mission for Institutions of Higher Learning” in our last issue,
we talked with W. Gardner Campbell, education thought leader and Virginia Commonwealth University associate professor of English, about how institutions can be informed by their digital opportunities. This month, Campbell considers why we should explore our digital opportunities for self- directed learning.
Campus Technology: Long term, will self-directed learning play an increasing role in student learning?
Gardner Campbell: First, I do think that there needs to be an emphatic role for self-directed learning.
There will always be an impulse toward self-directed learning, and part of my
job as a teacher is to amplify, and make even more effective, the students’ disposition toward it, as well as point them toward more opportunities for self-directed learning.
But then we come to the second
part of my answer, which is that while self-directed learning may establish a kind of ecosystem of its own, it’s not
an ecosystem in which learning will necessarily live up to its potential. And it’s not an ecosystem that will necessarily bring forward considerations of what it means to be an individual in a community, who works for the common good.
So at some point, self-directed learning, which is now an absolutely vital concept
in higher learning, has to be considered as part of a larger conceptual framework. The larger framework incorporates the institution, the curriculum and the faculty.
This is more radical and dramatic, I think, than it sounds on the surface — ultimately something very different from what we have today.
37 CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | August/September 2017
“There will always be an impulse toward self-directed learning, and part of my job as a teacher is to amplify, and make even more effective, the students’ disposition toward it, as well as point them toward more opportunities for self-directed learning.”
That larger framework should stress
the role of expert-directed study and expert-facilitated encounters, especially in opportunities for self-directed learning. Students will have to be in touch with many different experts, especially those who disagree with each other. That’s what will allow us to “re-invent the university.”
CT: Is it going to be difficult for institutions to focus on that? Won’t they just tend to support traditional, established teacher-learner models?
Campbell: The university, which already has become what Clark Kerr calls the “multiversity,” may at first find it difficult