investigation report

Self-access
Video-lab investigation

In order to understand what the video-lab is, how it works, and some other aspects, we, as a team, had to perform some research about that. For that reason, we visited the library a couple of times so that we could look for some information from other people who have written about Self-Access Centres. Once there, books containing relevant information were few, therefore, we decided to search by author hoping there was more information concerning our topic. Indeed, we could find a book from Sturtridge. After that, we kept looking for more books; nevertheless, the important ones were borrowed already, so we just used the Sturtridge’s. To begin with the research, we found that this author considers four types of SACs. As a hypothesis before our research we thought that our Self-Access Centre is a combination from two of the classification Sturtridge proposes. Some characteristics from Sturtridge’s Practice and Learning Centres are the same that here in the SAC we have. The author mentions other two SACs, the Skill and Instruction Centre, which we consider this college do not implement due to different reasons, some are because the school does not fulfill the main characteristics or not part of the students needs.
After the documental investigation, we went to the video room to see how it was organized. We observed it carefully based on Sturtridge´s book advices for material and space housekeeping, and the teachers and staff preparation. In order to do this, we had to ask some questions to the person in charge and to the assistants.
Finally, our research turned out pretty interesting, since we found that the space is not being used correctly, they have space for more than 25 five students and they just have 10 spaces with the material in service. The activities done in here have a pre-activity and a post-activity (finally a good thing), but they are optional and no one cares if the students did them. Its important to mention that many tvs and dvds are not working cause they have a malfunction and no one seems to care about fixing them.
Another important thing we observed was that neither the assistants nor the teacher in charge serve as guides for the students learning, they just check that the students are not talking by the phone, texting, talking to each other, etc.
Based on our observations and investigation we consider that many of the advices in Sturtridge´s book would really improve our video room. We consider that the best ones are:
- To give the staff a preparation on housekeeping of the material and space of the room
- To give training courses to the staff in how to facilitate students ‘learning
- To make the teacher in charge conscious of her role in that room
- To give students a preparation course on how to use the centre
- Motivate students by making them aware of how the centre may help their learning process.
Finally, we came up to the conclusion that our hypothesis was right. With this we want to explain that the video room has both characteristics from the practice centre (limited opportunities to learn more than what has been learned in class, the system is closely integrated with the institution´s programme, etc.) and the learning centre, even though its aim is to be a like the latter one, it hasn´t reached it yet. Since it lacks of material that goes beyond of providing practice and it does not have a well prepared staff.
Alan´s team
References
Sturtridge (1992)

essay

Autonomy Alan Garcia Altuzar
This word is a difficult one to define due to its many interpretations depending on the context and study area, however I would like to define it in my own words as the capability that people have to take decisions and assume all the consequences that come along with taking them.
But what really concerns us as future teachers is the definition of learning autonomy in students which means the same as autonomy the only difference I would mention is that the decisions taken are just the ones concerning to the student´s learning.
Of course learning autonomy is not an inborn ability, it´s an ability supposedly acquired in a natural way even though this almost never happens that way. This leads us to the other way of acquiring it, the one where autonomy is built up in the student along with his academic life. This last one depends on many aspects, such as the teacher, the school environment, the student´s learning styles, motivation and many others.
In order to identify when a student has achieved autonomy in his/her learning we have to look for some general aspects, which are:

- Determining the objectives
- Defining contents and progressions
- Selecting methods and techniques to be used
-Evaluation of what has been acquired


All of these aspects are present in autonomous learners, and they should be all students’ goal. But in order to reach it, it is important to mention that motivation plays a really important role when talking about learning autonomy, since a student has to be motivated in order to be eager to learn, and this motivation may come from the outside environment of the student or from the inside of his person.
Once we have reached a learning autonomy, we´ll of course see how it leads us to effectiveness in the process and finally to a successful way of acquiring new information.