Reflection # 3

Healey’s effort, in fact, represents a critical look out of the concept of autonomy in terms of learning that conveys creating the ways and strategies to best achievements, meaningful learning, and perceiving the goals for learning. Healey discusses the four perspectives on autonomy described by Oxford (2003) in the area of CALL: technical (issues of setting & content), psychological, socio-cultural, and political-critical.

The term technical perspective, covering issues of learning, focuses on the gradual alteration of the process of controlling over learning, ranging from highly structured learning through highly self-directed learning. Likewise, regarding the issues of content, the effects of technology on learners’ styles of learning is discussed that how technology can offer varying modes of learning.

Considering the psychological perspective, the matters such as self-motivation, creating independent style o learning, and developing self-knowledge are perceived as major advantages of autonomous learning. This section of the article argues that the real goal of teaching is not necessarily to feed learners by knowledge, but rather to let them to construct knowledge, and to create their own styles.

The article also emphasizes the need for interpersonal interaction that challenges the misconception existing regarding the idea of “autonomy” which implies the association between autonomous learning and isolation or individualized learning. It also addresses CALL as an effective instrument to assist the interpersonal interaction.

The last part of the article, the political-critical perspective, emphasizes learners’ self-awareness and alerts the autonomous learners to be careful regarding using technology because as the article states, all the data is not necessarily provided by a handful of more skilled. Rather, the author encourages the autonomous learners to do not easily accept them. Therefore, the learners must critically look at the issues and should be aware of how to evaluate information.

Overall, I enjoyed a lot reading this article. The author’s efforts show that she could clearly define the responsibility of both instructors and the learners in the process of autonomous learning. In particular, I agree with what the author brought as the main concept of autonomous learning that the term autonomous refers more of thoughts rather than a technique. Most important, I was impressed by what the writer comes up with, that the term autonomy is not associated with isolation, but rather she emphasizes the highly effects of communities on autonomous learners. However, it is disputable for me that regarding the responsibilities of instructors, the article overemphasizes some pedagogical issues as instructors’ responsibilities more than content knowledge. So, I have a question that are the teachers responsible for directing students how they should learn, or also to assist them more of what should they learn?

Reading Reflection #2

Mainly the purposes of Anderson’s study (2003) are, firstly, to point out the distinctions between those types of education that occur in a formal education and the types of interaction which are dealt with any informal context; and secondly, to explain three modes of interactions: student-student, student- teacher, and student-content; as well as to assess the equivalency among those types of interaction. Anderson comes up with the idea of equivalency while there has also been a tendency that along the development of technology, the term student-content form of interaction might be considered as a high priority.
Giving these, I assume that in distance education context, apparently the students would effectively benefit from the student-content interaction rather than the other two modes of interaction because in this case the students are basically more exposed with the contents rather than effective ways of student-teacher, and student-student interactions.