How to Encourage Students to Become Self-Learners?
Learning is not limited to simply remembering material and regurgitating it. The way people learn is changing and nowadays true learning is linked to self-learning which further turns to be the furnace of self-motivation for students. Studies indicate that graduates aren’t prepared for the real world, as 87% feel like they are ready to make their mark in the working world soon after graduating, but only half of the hiring managers agree with them. Students spend nearly 20,000 hours experiencing classroom education by the age of 18, and much of what is taught is forgotten within a short time. This means that students have not learned how to retain and apply knowledge.
According to the best CBSE schools in Odisha, key skills like communication, teamwork, and leadership are very important to be cultivated in the students in their school life, as it makes them ready for the modern workforce. This could be achieved by self-directed learning and therefore encouraging students to become self-learners is of utmost importance to make them ready for the future.
Learning how to learn is an art that will help students in the long run. It is never too early to encourage and teach students how to begin to learn independently. The best school in Bhubaneswar, like ODM public school, is using few ways to make their students self-learners.
Here are a few of them:
1. Introspecting oneself to understand where we lie is the very first step in the self-learning process. To achieve their learning goals, students must know their current situation. Here educators can step in and perform an audit, considering the specific circumstances of the individual so they can tailor the self-direction process.
2. Traditional school education has made the bell schedules, theoretical learning, hall passes, and punishments a part of school culture. Students grow up with this as their normal life, which leads to regimental behavior, often the antithesis of self-directed learning. Thus, schools need to carry out a readiness assessment to determine the current status of the student’s ability. Once, they have got the idea about the potential of students they should be ready to welcome changes in their education process, giving students a more healthy environment to become self-learners.
3. Cultivate the motivation for self-learning inside students. Use the power of your relationship with students to show a passion for learning. When you embody a passion for learning, your students are more likely to have a powerful, positive emotional connection to learning that will inspire their motivation to continue to learn. With teachers who release their passion for learning, students across all grades are free to learn new ways of learning with motivation and joy. Over time, expect self-motivation rather than compliance.
4. Imagination is the secret key to open the doors of self-learning. Guide students to imagine how they will feel when they learn something new. Make them acquainted with stories of people who have achieved their goals with self-learning. Allow volunteers to describe their feelings after they learned something. This will surely ignite the flame of motivation which if nurtured properly will soon turn into the flame of self-motivation.
5. Help students to set goals to be achieved through self-learning. Once they have done it, encourage them to tell a friend their learning goal and get their support. This allows students to verbalize their goals, which will help them internalize it. Students of all ages are inherently social, and getting support from a peer can be very motivating.