The development of a brief measure of learner autonomy in university students

Abstract

A great deal of attention is paid to the requirement for university students to become autonomous learners. A review of the literature revealed a lack of relatively short psychometrically sound measures of autonomous learning despite its purported importance.This study aimed to develop a brief psychometrically sound measure of autonomous learning to facilitate empirical research in this area. Items for the scale were selected from reviewing the literature and face validity was confirmed by experienced academics. In the first study, first year psychology students (N =214) completed the measure. Principal components analysis produced a 12 item measure with 2 subscales that appeared to be psychometrically sound. The factor structure was reproduced with a more diverse group of undergraduates (N =172) in a second study. The internal reliability and the concurrent validity of the scale were both found to be satisfactory suggesting that this measure may prove useful to educational researchers.

Measuring the e-Learning Autonomy of Distance Education Students

“…While there have been studies in many fields, there has been a lack of studies on the learner autonomy of distance education students, especially those in e-learning environments. This gap has been frequently underscored in the relevant literature in recent years (Arnold, 2006;Macaskill & Taylor, 2010;Hartnett et al, 2011;Seiver & Troja, 2014). Due to this gap, many studies have even cited research on autonomy in foreign language learning (Aliweh, 2011).…”

An Investigation of the Relationship between Autonomous Learning and Lifelong Learning

“…Autonomous Learning Scale (12 items) which was developed by Macaskill and Taylor (2010), was adapted to Turkish by Arslan and Yurdakul (2015) was conducted to measure autonomous learning. Lifelong Learning Scale (14 items) which was developed by Kirby, Knapper, Lamon and Egnatoff (2010), was adapted to Turkish by Arslan and Akcaalan (2015) was carried out to assess lifelong learning level.…”

Student perceptions of their autonomy at University

“…Definitions of learner autonomy generally include a number of key themes: responsibility or ownership of outcomes (internal locus of control); confidence in skills or ability to achieve (self-efficacy); engagement with student-led learning (self-regulation) (Chan 2001;Fazey and Fazey 2001;Macaskill and Taylor 2010;Macaskill and Denovan 2013); and, the "surface" vs. "deep" approach, where autonomous students independently attempt to expand their knowledge base instead of focusing on prescribed material (Thomas et al 2015). These themes align with the commonly held view of university teachers that university students "should" differ from school pupils by actively pursuing their own education agenda within the higher education environment (Lowe and Cook 2003;Scott et al 2015;Thomas et al 2015).…”