Reflection on the reading in week 12

How to reflect the learning process by the students themselves with the help of computer and Internet? Schwienhorst (2003) answered this question in his article.
First of all, he retorted five misunderstanding of the definition of learner autonomy and cited the definition given by Little (1991). Learner autonomy refers to the learners' capacity for critical self-evaluation and self-determination and the ability to take control over and responsibility to one's learning.

The author stated three approaches of learner autonomy useful. They are individual-cognitive perspective, social-interactive as well as the experimental-participatory perspective. Take the writing as an example, the learners need their own language awareness, adequate input, feedbacks from the others and various possibilities to inspect or re-inspect the writings, etc.

The author held the opinion that the tandem learning was one of the implementations of learner autonomy, however, he also listed some concerns involved in tandem learning. Two examples were provided, one was asynchronous communication and another one was synchronous communication.

In the end, the author suggested three parts should be taken into consideration to evaluate the CMC tools and pedagogies--pressures, affordances and potentials of media.