Learner Autonomy And New Learning Environments

Learner Autonomy and New Learning Environments

Introduction:

This article is titled Learner Autonomy and New Learning Environments, the public in October 2011, and its authors are Hayo Reinders (Middlesex University) and Cynthia White (Massey University). The highest point of the authors are autonomy, technology and education in students. In this article we talk about autonomy and technology in language education. In this study believed that technology is a tool that helps students and teachers to achieve specific educational goals. I have authors each take a different perspective on the intimate relationships between autonomy and technology outlined above.

The areas of autonomy and technology in language education have a potentially very close but in practice often also uneasy relationship. In a narrow sense, technology is a tool that helps learners and educators to achieve certain educational goals. Autonomy can be one of those goals. But it can also in itself be an instrument towards the achievement of other educational goals. Autonomy is a bit like art; we can’t agree on its definition, but all seem to know what it is. However, recognizing autonomous learning when we see it is one thing, understanding how we can better encourage it, and the role of technology in this, is another. The technology has the potential to not only provide access to resources for learning in a superficial sense, but also to offer increased affordances for autonomous learning. Opportunities for interaction, situated learning, and support for learning outside formal contexts, have greatly improved because of technology. In addition, technology has revealed the extent and importance of the social networks learners engage in, and their effect on what and how people learn. This has helped researchers and practitioners to learn more about what it means to be an autonomous learner in practice. For example, it is now better understood that autonomy is very much about interdependence, not merely about independence. Such understanding opens opportunities for more meaningful instructional intervention, or support. But technology also places constraints on the development of autonomy. As mentioned above, access to, for example, authentic materials or native speakers can be detrimental if learners are not prepared or supported for this. Reliance on technology can, for example, discourage learners from memorizing new vocabulary when they have direct access to an online dictionary.

The author developing good ideas, examples of studies wrote about autonomy, language, and technology students. I agree based on my experience and what I read. The evidence valid are At a superficial level, computers are good at monitoring students’ engagement and progress, and programs exist that use this information to guide learners and encourage them to make decisions about their own learning (Reinders, 2007). More recently, and perhaps more liberatingly, mobile technologies allow learners to have access to resources in out-of-school contexts (Kukulska-Hulme& Traxler, 2005), potentially linking afford ances in the environment with immediate support. As a result, there is now a much richer appreciation of the role of learning outside the classroom (Benson & Reinders, 2011), not only in terms of the time learners spend learning, practicing and of course using the language in non-formal learning environments, but also in the ways in which educators can prepare learners for, as well as guide them in such learning. A Hayo Reinders and Cynthia White Special Issue Commentary reconceptualization of language education as the provision of a collection of affordances that start from the learners as individuals, and include classrooms, materials, native speakers, teachers, assessment, other learners, the workplace, and so on, has been made more practically feasible, and methodologically easier to investigate, through the pervasive use of technology. We therefore gradually see a shift in our understanding of autonomy as a rather vague set of skills or attitudes, to more specific abilities to navigate different (learning) environments, with technology playing an important facilitative role. In addition, technology has revealed the extent and importance of the social networks learners engage in, and their effect on what and how people learn. This has helped researchers and practitioners to learn more about what it means to

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