Whoever said that we never stop being learners couldn’t have been more right. From our daily routine tasks to the skills required at school and on the job, everything requires us to constantly change, adapt and most importantly learn.
This would not be possible if individuals did not take responsibility for their learning process. This is why independent and self-directed learning is also an essential skill that should be taught and encouraged in the school itself.
This blog enlists various activities that inculcate the values of self-directed learning and help individuals become more in charge of the process.
Games and activities to build self-directed learners
Being an independent learner takes some time and hard work. Going from the highly structured curriculum of the school and other educational institutions to being the sole person responsible for managing what you learn, when, and how you learn can seem overwhelming. But it is certainly possible by starting small by including various self-directed learning activities and strategies in learners’ daily lives. Some of those activities can look like this:
1. Topical games

The advancements in the ed-tech industry and the understanding of the importance of accessible and engaging education have led to widespread gamification of the most basic to more advanced topics.
Students can be promoted to become in charge of their learning by encouraging them to identify the topics they are struggling with. Then they can be provided with laptops or computers with child-protection internet settings on. Their task would be to find games regarding the topics they have identified and play them. After a fixed and moderated amount of time spent playing the game, they can write about what topics did the game help them understand better.
This can be a helpful starting point in making students self-directed and independent learners. The games will be a fun and exciting way of learning new things and clarifying old concepts, all by themselves.
2. Online courses

Understanding the importance of an independent and flexible approach to learning, most online courses available today offer a self-paced option. Taking advantage of this feature, the students can be asked to pick a course that sparks their interests and complete it during the school year.
They will have a wide variety of options, from creative courses like art and painting and history of literature to skill-building and project-based vocational courses like product management and industrial planning, online courses bring the knowledge of world-renowned experts to their screens.
There are no strict deadlines and the course material is structured to suit all, from beginners to advanced learners. At the end of the year, there can be a day fixed where students have to talk about their learnings, show the projects they might have worked on, and discuss with other students what they have learned. This will enrich their learning process and experience as well as give them ideas about what courses they can opt for next year.
3. Build from scratch

For this activity, the students will have to be divided into groups of 4 to 5 students in each. They will have to make a model related to a concept they have learned in school together.
They will have to discuss amongst each other what social phenomena, mathematical operations, scientific principles, etc. they want to display and represent using that model. Brownie points if the model is a working one, for example, the classic dish soap volcano.
In this activity, the students will have to come up with a topic they want to explore and explain using a model and different ways to do that, all on their own.
4. My personal how-to

For this activity as well, the students will need access to computers, laptops or tablets with the internet.
Their task will be to find a topic that intrigues them. They can watch videos, browse through scholarly articles, and read various eBooks to find the current topics of interest in their field and subject of choice. Once they have selected the topic, they will then be required to come up with a personalized learning plan on how they will learn all about it. This learning plan will include the amount of time they will devote to learning this topic, the various sources of information they will cover during this activity, etc. This activity can also act as an example of self-directed learning giving students ideas about planning their learning process.
The students can present these topics along with their plans and how-to’s. Other students also interested in these topics can join them and they can help each achieve their learning goals.
5. The prize on top

For this activity, the students will have to make use of whatever objects they can find in their surroundings.
The class will be divided into two teams with equal students in each. Their task will be to make a structure out of any and every object they can find in their school. The winning team would be the one with the tallest and most stable structure made completely out of common classroom items.
A key tenet of self-directed learning is discovering knowledge that is different from the convention. Here students will learn different ways to use everyday classroom objects to build a tall and stable structure, hence constructing new knowledge in the process on their own, to reach the prize on top.
6. My week in foresight
The school’s curriculum plans everything in advance from the books used and the topics to be covered to the medium of instruction. Going on a self-directed and independent journey of learning also requires a fair bit of planning.
In this activity, the learner can take a few minutes to an hour to plan whatever they want to learn in the coming week. They can also set the amount of proficiency they expect to achieve by the end of the week and how they will be measuring their progress. This can also give them time to reflect on the previous week’s goals and how many of them they were able to meet.
Planning is an essential component of doing any task, including learning. This activity will not only teach the students how to set their learning goals and structure them in a way so they are more likely to achieve them but also how to engage in the planning process, leave room for unpredictable obstacles and learn from previous experiences to do better next week.
7. My 2 minutes

For this activity, the students will be given the liberty to pick a topic of their own choice. It could be something personal like their pets or their family or something global like environmental conservation, sustainable development, or anything they personally connect with.
They will be given a day to research the topic and prepare a 2-minute long piece to speak about the topic, including why they chose it to begin with. They will then have to present their takes in front of the whole class the next day. This could be in the form of a poem, a song, a speech, or any medium they prefer.
This activity will give students the freedom to choose their topic and go about preparing their piece however they like. Their 2 minutes will be a reflection of the self-directed research and preparation that they put into their piece.
8. Write the instruction manual

For this activity, the educator will have to collect some everyday ordinary items like a duster, a screwdriver, a bottle opener, etc.
The students will be divided into groups of three to four and assigned an ordinary item randomly. Their job will be to think outside of the box and write an instruction manual highlighting how to use that object. The catch here is, the students have to instruct the usage of the item in ways different from the obvious. For example, they can highlight how to use a bottle opener as a keychain or a screwdriver as a hammer. The group to come up with most out of the box uses will win.
This activity will encourage the students to learn about the possible alternative uses of these everyday household objects on their own. This will make their exploration journey self-directed and also boost creativity.
9. Ask the expert

For this activity, the student will have to find a real-life expert about a particular topic or subject in their real lives.
Who ends up being the expert or experts would depend on the topic they choose. If they want to learn about financial management, the experts could range from their parents who manage all their personal and household expenses as well to an accountant who manages an organization’s expenses. The students will then have to prepare a set of questions based on who they decide to interview. If they feel satisfied with the information they have received and learned from one expert, they can stop their interview there or they can go on to interview more people till they feel like they know all there is to know about this subject.
The answers to the interview can be shared in the form of a project report with the entire class. All the students will end up learning about different aspects of a topic, as informed by aspects, all from their own efforts.
10. Shadow for the day

There are a lot of different jobs and people that work behind the smooth and efficient running of an educational system like schools, colleges, etc.
For this activity, the students will choose any working professionally on the campus as their muse and shadow them for the day. From a school janitor to a sports coach to security to a school counselor to even the management, the student will have the choice of shadowing anyone whose job profile and work they want to learn more about.
This activity will not only inspire students and help them figure out their career goals but will also put them in the driver’s seat of those careers. They will understand how much they can learn from people they are around every day and motivate them to take more proactive steps to do the same more often just like the way some enriching quotes keep inspiring us every time we come across them.
Conclusion
Being the sole person in charge of your entire learning process can certainly seem like a daunting task. But, it is an essential skill that students need to be well versed in right from their school days. Though, self-direction has its own set of advantages of disadvantages, activities that inculcate the values of self-directed learning step by step can help students eventually become self-reliant learners and well-adjusted adults.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,