SOURCE
Vol. 16
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No. 3
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July 2019
17
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Self-Directed Learning to Support Part-Time FYS Instructors: A Proposed Model
Lydia Laucella
First-year seminars (FYS) set the foundation for students to take ownership of their learning in college. A sampling of literature puts scholarly focus on the importance of developing self-directed learning (SDL) practices for both students and teachers (Garrison, 1997; Grow, 1991; Loyens, Magda, & Rikers, 2008; Silén & Uhlin, 2008), the benefits of which position students to develop an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses as learners. In turn, this understanding helps students focus their learning and helps teachers target their instruction. Most first-year students, however, are more familiar with direct instruction content delivery or teacher-centered pedagogies than with SDL behaviors. As SDL is typically a new approach for students, faculty modeling of these behaviors becomes imperative in helping students succeed in FYS and other first-year courses.
Reinhardt University
Assistant Director for the Center of Innovative Teaching, Assistant Professor of Education and Instructional Design
Even as the ability to translate SDL behaviors into everyday classroom practice grows in importance, colleges increasingly rely on adjunct faculty to teach first-year courses. As an example, in Fall 2018, Kennesaw State University (KSU) offered 145 FYS sections, according to Nirmal Trivedi, director of the First-Year and Transition Studies Department (N. Trivedi, personal communication, n.d.). Roughly 32% of those were taught by adjunct faculty members, with another 4% taught by instructors who worked full-time in other departments. Although these part-time faculty hold valuable real-world knowledge, they often are not provided adequate teacher training, so they can lack pedagogical expertise necessary to develop SDL behaviors in first-year students.
Supporting Part-time Faculty Garrison (1997) defines SDL as “an approach where learners are motivated to assume personal responsibility and collaborative control of the cognitive [self-monitoring] and contextual [self-management] processes in constructing and confirming meaningful and worthwhile learning outcomes” (p. 18). Garrison suggests that self-monitoring and self-management are represented by a student’s ability to set learning goals and become responsible for creating personal meaning. In a first-year classroom, students demonstrating SDL are likely to seek help after observing gaps in their learning and monitor their progress in collaboration with their instructor or classmates. Drawing on my own experiences as a part-time instructor of education in KSU’s First-Year and Transition Studies Department and on Shea, Li, and Pickett’s (2006) direct-instruction feedback loop, I developed a Model of Faculty Modeling-SDL, which can be used to support part-time FYS instructors. The model (see Figure 1) includes three stages, or steps, that instructors can implement at various points during the semester: (a) Faculty Modeling of I Do, Structured We Do, and You Do. This model can be applied to instructional activities that support learning and content delivery, while guiding students toward engagement in SDL practices.
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