Advancing Self-Directed Learning Through Artificial Intelligence

Preparing The Educator, Learner, And Environment

To ensure the best outcomes of SDL, the educator, learner, and the environment must be prepared. The biggest role in this preparation belongs to the educator, who must be well-trained to take on such a role and must set up the environment to best suit the needs of the students. The first step to harmonize the three important aspects of SDL is to prepare the educator for the new role. In her study, Nurfaradilla Nasri (2017) researched if teachers were willing to move away from traditional teaching styles and were open to SDL. After her study with 30 Malaysian PhD holders (17 female and 13 male), she concluded that teachers tend to be unwilling to let go of their authoritarian and all-knowing role as a teacher and are unlikely to adapt to a teaching style with a less authoritative teacher role. Based on this study, in order to better facilitate SDL to learners, qualified educators who are willing to step down from their authoritative role as a teacher and become a facilitator working with AI to better prepare learners to create their own path must be found for the job. One criteria to consider when looking at potential SDL educators could be their age. Since the study was based on PhD holders who have taught for many years in traditional teaching style, it is a bigger challenge for them to change their mindset and teaching style. However younger educators, who have minimal experience teaching, could be easier to train according to SDL educator guidelines. To create the best possible SDL educators, they should receive training that fits this new teaching style (Morris, 2019). This training should include lessons on how to best guide students so that they can set up their own goals and find their own resources as well as lessons on how to best work with AI to give personalized feedback to students. Secondly, the students themselves need to be informed on how the SDL process will be beneficial to them and how they can personalize their goals. The role of the educator becomes very important in this step because there will be some students who want to put in the least amount of effort and seem as if they are reaching their goals. Some students take advantage of various resources on the internet that inhibit learning. It is not uncommon for university students to share answers with each other online (Mahlaba, 2020). The educator has to understand each student's own capabilities so that every student set goals that are not only within their reach but also are not too easy for them. This part of the job where the educator determines a student’s true capabilities is not something current AI based exams can achieve. Students are smarter than these online tools, and if they desire, can answer questions wrong to have easier goals. Therefore, although AI makes some part of the job easier for the educator, the educator is still an important part of the process of personalizing learning for each student.