second blog entry

University study requires students to take responsibility for their own learning, to be more self-directed, to make their own decisions about what they will focus on and how much time they will spend on learning both inside and outside the classroom. How can you get the students up to this point by the end of the course or the year?

The first task for teachers is to encourage their students to make an effort if they want to be successful students. Students need to have intrinsic motivation and they will figure out that they are responsible of their own learning.

The chapter 2 from the book Captivating your Class recommend us to provide the scaffolds for independent learning. So, teachers must provide basic information about the topic they are teaching and then let the students work independently. In other words, teachers provide the scaffolding or the base where the students are going to build their knowledge.

For instance, teachers can use the homework assignments as a technique to make their students work outside of the classroom.

Also teachers can use ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to support independent learning. For example, teachers can provide podcast or vodcast or any other resource to their students and they will have more information to take it into account in the research of information for an specific topic.