2nd - 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?

It is for certain that the independent learning is not easy to manage and to accept. Most of us, most of students have faced the problem that they do not what to do or how to internalize the change between the university and their previous studies. We do not have to say that studying in a university is so much difficult than the other previous levels.

When students that have just gotten into the university are asked to develop some task with critical thinking (thinking outside the box), they face serious problems because they weren’t taught how to work without the help of a teacher. They will be surprised for all the work they have to do by their own!

And that doesn’t mean that the teacher will not help them at all, of course the teacher will help but he or she will be more a kind of a guide rather than a direct help.

Independent study is a step by step process, in which the student has to find the way through which he or she can acquired knowledge by his or her own. But all the responsibility does not go just for the student but also for the teacher. The teacher must work hard to get the students to learn independently at the end of a course. 

The independent learning will let the student to internalize the learning. When teachers let students learn by themselves, students become aware of their own learning.

The teacher have to encourage the student to learn by him or herself and from the very start, te teacher has to clarify that he will not do the student’s work, he will serve most like a guide.

That is a good start for going to the indendent learning!