[SEFI2017][Full paper] european students' perspective on self directed learning and the role of the

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European Students’ Perspective on Self-Directed Learning and the Role of the Professor

ABSTRACT In the last years, new methodologies, involving Self-Directed Learning (SDL) by students, have been applied in engineering education. According to previous studies, the majority of students use SDL when studying online. This led to questioning the role of a professor in an environment where students increasingly take more initiative for their own learning. Previous studies defend that the educator should take on the role of a facilitator who helps students and advises on the best learning approach, making a transition from a traditional academic concept to a more self-directed one.

This study shares the opinions of European students on the role of a professor in a self-directed environment. These were gathered during Events on Education organised by the Board of European Students of Technology (BEST). According to European students of Technology, SDL has become a major dynamic means of acquiring knowledge. For them, being mentored by a professor throughout this active learning experience is necessary and beneficial for enhanced understanding and personal growth. Consequently, they predict that the role of a professor on the academic scene will gradually shift from a lecturer to a technical mentor as SDL methods find their way into students’ curriculums.

Conference Key Areas: Open and Online Engineering Education, Continuing Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning, Quality Assurance and Accreditation Keywords: Self-Directed Learning, Role of Professor, Engineering Education

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INTRODUCTION Engineering education has been changing over the last years as a consequence of the implementation of new methodologies where students are self-directed in their own learning process. This means that they are able to diagnose their own learning needs, formulate goals, identify the resources needed, implement learning strategies and, in the end, evaluate their own learning outcomes [1]. Literature shows that students who are able to do so have a higher capacity to successfully conceive and manage projects and reach their goals [2]. Moreover, they can efficiently employ different learning resources to solve problems in learning tasks [3]. Additionally, SelfDirected Learning (SDL) seems to improve soft skills, such as self-motivation and innovation, which is highly appreciated in engineers in the corporate world [2].

The world is changing dramatically due to ubiquitous information accessibility and the development of electronic devices. In order to successfully accommodate this evolution, education must accompany and embrace these changes [4]. As technology becomes broadly accessible, a considerable number of institutions and companies, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Google, have started to provide massive open online courses (MOOCs) to engage learners from all around the globe. According to an MIT study [1], nearly 85% of students use SDL when studying online, which illustrates the importance of the topic.

This brings up the question of what the role of a professor in such an environment can be, where students more frequently take the initiative in their own learning. If the students are self-directed, do they really need a teacher? Previous studies defend that the educator should take on the role of a facilitator, coach or tutor, and as such, help students to make the transition from a traditional academic concept (i.e. teachercentred teaching) to a more self-directed one, while advising on the best learning approach [1,2].

This paper shares opinions on the role of a professor in a self-directed learning environment. These opinions from 61 European students were gathered during 3 Events on Education, organised by the Board of European Students of Technology (BEST). BEST is a non-profit, non-governmental and apolitical students’ organisation that consists of 3300 internationally minded students of technology from 32 countries.

BEST strives to develop 1.3 million students from 94 universities by providing them complementary education, career support and educational involvement through high quality services.

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MATERIALS AND METHODS

One of BEST’s activities with respect to its Educational Involvement is a series of events that carry the name ‘Events on Education’ (EoEs). With EoEs and their results, awareness of engineering students’ opinion on engineering education is to be raised. Students from different European countries, with different cultural and educational backgrounds take part in an EoE in order to tackle an important topic in engineering education. Insights can be produced, where students are often seen as passive recipients and a broader understanding of the topic can be generated. Within the scope of emerging academic publications, the students’ voice is amplified such that it can be heard by professors, teachers and engineering educators all around Europe.

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The following paper relates to three EoEs, whose topics were either directly or indirectly related to SDL. An EoE organised in Gliwice in 2016, gathering 18 European STEM students, had a session where general principles of e-learning and self-directed learning were discussed [5]. During an EoE in Copenhagen 2016, 21 European students of technology addressed the role of a professor in the sessions entitled “Education without professors”, “Mentoring” and “The professor's role in selfdirected learning” [4]. Finally an EoE in Riga was organised with 22 European STEM students in 2015, where the role of a professor was tackled through a session on “Exemplary university teacher profile” [6].

Individual sessions of an EoE, as mentioned in the above paragraph, describe a certain time frame during which members of the BEST Educational Involvement Department act as facilitators and as such apply different facilitation methods to extract opinions and ideas from the actively participating group of students of technology. The role of a facilitator is to guide the session in an efficient way and encourage everyone to participate without making his or her own opinion apparent. A wide range of facilitation methods, i.e. brainstorming, fishbone diagrams, group discussions and learning café [7], were applied in order to answer questions connected to the topics of self-directed learning and the role of the professor. Each EoE report specifies in detail which facilitation method was used for which session [4,5,6]. In order to make the results of these events as practical as possible, different evaluation strategies were used, including Grounded Theory [8] and Qualitative Content Analysis [9]. In many cases the participants made a converging summary themselves, so that interpretative measures were minimized.

Focussing on each individual EoE, the information gathering and analysis happened as follows. During EoE Gliwice a session on “General principles on EdTech and selfdirected learning” started with a lecture of Professor J. Rutkowski. After the presentation, the professor started to discuss the topic in an interactive way, while the students actively engaged and debated freely with the professor and each other.

The minutes of this session were recorded and their impact was analysed afterwards [5]. At EoE Copenhagen, brainstorming was used in an initial phase to generate ideas. Following the brainstorming, a SWOT Analysis was used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of the educational system with professors in four groups of students. Afterwards, the groups aimed to find several solutions during the world cafe. At the end, each group presented their work during the session. The SWOT analysis was used also for analysing the “Mentoring system” and “Peer to peer support” in groups of four. Following, the participants created the ideal mentoring system, using the previous outcomes. They were divided in 4 groups, from which half of them analysed the method from the students’ perspective. The other half analysed the method from the professor's perspective. After each exercise, the groups presented their outcomes [4]. In 2015, at EoE Riga, a panel discussion was held. In two hours, the panellists discussed the exemplary university professor and what the professor’s profile should be in order to teach and inspire students [6].

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

2.1 Self-Directed Learning Cheng et al. state that, SDL is a process that can be initiated at any desired time, place and age where students are the ones taking the initiative, with or without help,

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to determine their learning needs, select and implement appropriate learning strategies, and evaluate learning outcomes which can be pursued [11]. Students are free to learn in the bus, at the university or even during running. When compared to other learning methods, self-directed learning is a very convenient, inspiring and productive learning method because of the fact that there are no boundaries with respect to time or place.

In previous years, the rise of Technology Enhanced Learning brought world-class education to every Internet user with the help of online courses and MOOCs. Even though online courses are a huge opportunity to gain knowledge, in the past couple of years, they have reached their peak of popularity but couldn’t overcome traditional teaching methods [10]. Therefore, a blended model, the Self-Directed Learning model, was proposed as a solution to the problems and limitations of both online courses and traditional education.

In EoE Gliwice, a session on SDL was held and received input from 18 students on applications of SDL in their universities. 9 out of 18 students were using SDL in their curricula. One of the most important aspects of designing self-directed learning classes and providing content is to put different instructional methods that enable students to explore new learning opportunities and students were using a broad kind of materials in their respective universities such as PDF formats as presentation, website such as Duolingo, Moodle, Youtube podcasts, blogs, quizzes, screencasts and textbooks. According to participants making a SDL class more appealing and interesting to students requires 6 essential points: Be motivated about the subject; Make course interesting; Social contact, motivating each other; Collaborative is much better than alone; Set milestones; Universities posting their own materials tutorials and tests, extra material. This motivates the teachers and a motivating loop is made [5].

During EoE Copenhagen, an examination was held, consisted of developing an educational system that could be implemented in all the countries of origin of the participants. It should be focused on higher education related to the scientific and technologic area. To develop this system, the participants had to define up to 5 main problems in the current educational system. Later on they had to prepare a presentation just with flipcharts and physical material. Unsurprisingly, self-directed learning was the solution to their problems [4].

Firstly, examination methods only evaluate a part of the acquired knowledge; there is always information that is not asked. Proposed solution was to use self-directed learning, the students create a product which through active learning and active involvement of the students and it can be even used the solution for their future work.

These exams should be a challenging, not just the exercises of the book or the lessons, they should be organised in a way that makes the students think. It helps to think out of the box. Second problem of higher education according to participants is the lack of motivation and involvement of students. In order to solve this issue, participants liked the idea of creation of their own solutions, analysis and interactive classes, which comes with SDL. Thirdly lack of teaching training can be fixed by training sessions for teachers where they can use gamification, online courses, reversed classrooms and self-directed learning. Finally, students identified loss of concentration during the lessons is a great problem waiting to be solved by SDL classes because this way the students would take more initiative in their learning with more interactive classes.

In spite of the aforementioned advantages and flexibility, SDL has many variables to become successful and effective. The teacher must assess the classroom to

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formulate a better, successful structured learning process. He or she should make students aware of their role in this process by encouraging independence and a positive attitude, while investigating students’ need and supporting them so they don’t feel like they are working on their own. The quality of e-materials, such as papers, ebooks and podcasts, drastically increases the impact of the classes. According to Bhat et al., anonymous feedback from participants of SDL classrooms indicated that students tend to find SDL classes more intriguing and helped grasping the topics with stimulated thinking, while creating an active learning process [12].

As a conclusion, SDL can be a very useful teaching method if taught properly, but cannot be used by inexperienced educators, as they do not have the tools to properly make the most of SDL, which they would find extremely demanding in terms of efforts. Being a self-directed learner provides a student to become more motivated, self-disciplined, confident, goal-oriented and persistent.

2.2 The Role of a Professor in Self-Directed Learning The transition of the classroom from a traditional standpoint of teaching to a selfdirected learning method is the progression of the teacher’s role from a “Sage on Stage” to a “Guide on Side”. Traditionally the teacher is the authority and a coach in the classroom with respect to SDL the teacher becomes rather a guide and a motivator to the students [5]. Nevertheless, a guide makes the learning experience a collaborative process while making sure that the students take the initiative to learn the material while providing them with the necessary support and resources.

According to research done on EoE Riga in 2015, European students believe that the ideal professor does not exist [6]. In their opinion, a ‘good’ professor should interact ‘a lot’ with his students, give them feedback and provide more than merely technical knowledge. Of course, the professor needs to understand what he is teaching in order to be effective, yet effective teaching also includes motivation and inspiration of students. Possibilities are here to provide information on how technical knowledge can be applied in real situations, and what effects this can have. Professors should additionally be researchers and preferably have corporate working experience. This way, the transfer of theoretical knowledge to real life applications might be feasible.

In other EoEs, such as EoE Copenhagen in 2016, the image of an ideal mentor was discussed [4]. By Oxford Dictionary definition a mentor is “an experienced person in a company or educational institution who trains and counsels new employees or students” [13]. On the other hand a lecturer is described as “a person who gives lectures, especially as an occupation at a university or college of higher education” [14], and a professor as “a university academic of the highest rank; the holder of a university chair” [15].

In 2016 a case study on the topic of the “Ideal mentoring system and the ideal mentor” was carried out during EoE Copenhagen [4]. Students gave their perspective on these two matters. Participants were asked to give input from the perspective of a student and from the perspective of a professor. The students’ perspective is that a mentor needs skills and experience because the usual problem is that the mentor does not have the necessary skills to efficiently transfer the knowledge. A mentor should be open-minded in order to connect with his students, be approachable, reliable and dedicated. Other students were asking for availability, flexibility and the eagerness to teach and share in a good mentor (to share the relevant knowledge, to use the updated materials, to be advanced in their field of study). It was stated that a mentoring system should be a continuous process. The possibility of having several

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mentors, per student, with different expertise should exist. In the ideal mentoring system, the mentor should treat all the students equally and have good relations with other mentors. On the other hand, students believe that the professor's perspective is that a mentor is a facilitator of the learning process. A mentor should be talkative and motivating, be trained on interacting with students, be experienced, have relevant skills, emotional intelligence, tolerance and respect. He should know how to communicate in order to transfer the knowledge and be passionate about the subject.

In a mentoring system, the rules of communication should be defined by the mentor, who would also have to schedule social and informal meetings to keep the connection between him and students upright. In the students’ opinion, mentoring should happen regularly for each student, who should be highly motivated. The mentor-student-relation is built on mutual communication and the mentors should develop a system for feedbacking the student(s) they mentor. Students believe that with this system they are going to be more engaged and learn more [4].

Besides defining the term of the “ideal mentor” and the “ideal mentorship” the students were asked to provide their opinion on how education would look without the professor. A session with the title “Education without professors” was held during EoE Copenhagen. Participants evaluated the current education situation and tried to find adequate ways to improve the European Higher Education. The main question was whether educators are needed or not. The participants did a SWOT analysis, with which they evaluated Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of the educational system with professors in their classic role. After the evaluation, the participants found some solutions for a potential university education without professors in their classical role, which are the following: •

Creation of an Online, Wikipedia-like platform that contains topics of the lectures, forums through which students interact and discuss lectures with frequently asked questions, previous students’ recommendations, quizzes, previous exams and notification system for deadlines and homework. In this platform a grading system could be implemented.

•

Removal of professors from the current system - Facilities with laboratories and libraries would remain the same; they would have timetables like the current system but with more flexible approach. The lectures would be based on the videos that lecturers previously recorded. The importance of this system is having many sources for lectures from which the students can observe different knowledge presentation, as different styles attract different people. This would combine also online working opportunities and guidance.

Assignments could be done in groups and projects with mentors. Job fairs, conferences and students exchanges, which are currently out of curricular activities, would be implemented in the curriculum as a chance for better development of the students. The students would evaluate each other continuously and provide constant feedback to the mentors in order to update the lecture materials.

•

Free Classroom - In this system the students would be divided in several groups of 4 to 6 students. Each of these student groups would work on a specific topic and each member of group would work on a specific subtopic.

This system promotes group and teamwork. Once different members learn their subtopics, they would teach them to their group in order to understand the subject completely. Moreover, there would be a constant information flow between students of different academical years. After the theoretical aspects, the exercises would be done together with all the groups. The Free Classroom

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method is meant to develop the students’ involvement in their field, team spirit, teaching skills, self-confidence and inspiration for the subject as groups.

•

Closing the gap between universities and companies - In the education without professors in his classic role, the students should be guided throughout the whole evaluation process. This opens an opportunity to improve the contact with the corporate world by giving the students a chance to participate and solve problems delivered by companies, such as case studies or internships. With this methodology, we are focusing more to what companies look for in students and expect from graduates that just finished their degree and are about to look for a job [4].

In a self-directed learning environment, an educator is there to help the students to get involved in the evaluation of learning process. The students get motivated and confident, they get competences and, most importantly, they become critical thinkers regarding what they are learning. Additionally, the educator gives support on social and emotional aspects, such as motivation. Finally, it’s the educator's responsibility to design and develop all the content that will be used by the students [4].

During EoE Copenhagen [4], 21 students of European universities did a brainstorming session about what should be the professor’s role under the concept of self-directed learning. According to them the most important role of a professor is guiding them through the learning process. Following, other important tasks of a professor are: focusing on objectives, promotion of critical thinking, motivating students, providing feedback, mentoring, being available for students, providing materials and resources and establishing and keeping track of deadlines.

European students of technology concluded that in a self-directed learning context, a good professor: A) has knowledge on guiding the students throughout the whole process, B) is clear in transmitting to the students the goals that need to be achieved.

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CONCLUSION

Self-Directed Learning (SDL) has become a major dynamic way of acquiring knowledge for European students of technology. Being a self-directed learner helps these students to become more motivated, self-disciplined, confident, goal-oriented and persistent. Throughout the active, self-directed learning experience, the mentoring by a professor is seen as necessary and beneficial for enhanced understanding and personal growth. That is if the quality of mentoring is well evaluated based on the mentor’s ability to clearly state the learning goals and guide the students through the learning process. Consequently, the role of a professor on the academic scene is predicted to gradually shift from lecturer towards technical mentor as Self-Directed Learning methods find their way into students’ curriculums.

REFERENCES [1] Caravello, M.J., Jimenez, J.R., Kahl, L.J., Brachio, B., Morote, E.S. (2015), Self-Directed Learning: College Students’ Technology Preparedness Change in the Last 10 Years, Journal for Leadership and Instruction, Fall 2015, pp. 1825.

[2] Barry, R., Rees, M. (2011), Is (Self-Directed) Learning the Key Skill for Tomorrow’s Engineers?, European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 73-81.

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[3]

Chou, P.N. (2012), The Relationship Between Engineering Students’ SelfDirected Learning Abilities And Online Learning Performances: A Pilot Study, Contemporary Issues in Education Research, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 33-38.

[4]

Yildiz, Y.U., Mihajlov, S., Sousa Pinto, D.J., Report on BEST Event on Education “Teach Me to Teach You!”, Copenhagen, 1 July - 11 July 2016, https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/eoe-copenhagen.

[5]

Manasova, D., Merlier, A., Guliaeva, A., Wippich, A., Trajkovikj, N., Report on BEST Event on Education “Be on the right track with SMART, learning change”, Gliwice, 21 July - 31 July 2016, https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/eoegliwice.

[6]

Stanojevic, M., Garklava, E., Bour, I., Zhou, O.Y., Report on BEST Event on Education “Let's Cement The Canyon! Removing The Gap Between University and Profession”, Riga, 23 July - 31 July 2015, https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/eoe_riga_report.

[7]

Brown, J., Isaacs, D., Rgulies, N., Warhaftig, G., (1999), The World Café: Catalyzing Large-Scale Collective Learning, Pegasus Communications.

[8]

Glaser, B., Strauss A., (2012), The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Transaction Publishers.

[9]

Mayring, P. (2000), Qualitative Content Analysis, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol. 1, No. 2, Art. 20, http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/index.php/fqs/article/viewArticle/1089/2385.

[10] Guo, P.J., Reinecke, K. (2014), Demographic Differences in How Students Navigate Through MOOCs, L@S 2014, ACM, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. [11] Chen, M. (2010), Relationships Among Self-Directed Learning, Learning Styles, Learning Strategies and Learning Achievement for Students of Technology University in Taiwan by Using Structural Equation Models, Recent Researches in Educational Technologies, pp. 67–72.

[12] Bhat, K., Devi, S., Ramya, S., Ravichandran, K., Kanungo, R. (2016), Selfdirected learning to enhance active learning among the 2nd-year undergraduate medical students in Microbiology: An experimental study, Journal of Current Research in Scientific Medicine, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.80-83.

[13] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/mentor [14] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/lecturer [15] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/professor