With participants from as far as the United States, the North-West University’s (NWU’s) fourth International Self-Directed Learning (SDL) Conference was a great success.

Hosted by the NWU’s SDL research unit, the theme for this year’s conference was “Self-Directed Learning: An imperative for innovative learning”.

The three-day-long conference had a long list of speakers who shared their expertise on best practices, research and guidelines on technology and multimodality, contextualisation, teaching, learning and assessment strategies, and curriculum and praxis.

A highlight was when the SDL research unit presented an award to Johan van Lill, Radio Sonder Grense (RSG) presenter, for his contribution to the enhancement of SDL in society as a whole.

Over the years Johan has devoted many hours of his radio programme, “Ons en die onderwys” (Us and education), to self-directed learning, thereby creating platforms for teachers, students and parents to engage on various aspects in the education sector.

Watch his interview here.

More about the conference

The keynote speakers – all previous awardees of the International Society of Self-Directed Learning’s Malcolm Knowles Award – were Dr Michael Ponton from Texas A&M University-Commerce, Dr Naomi Boyer from Polk State College in Florida, and Dr Elsa Mentz from the NWU’s SDL research unit.

Dr Ponton’s presented his keynote address – “An agentic perspective of learning and suggestions for teaching” – on the first day of the conference.

On the second day Dr Boyer grabbed the attention of attendees with an interactive session about “The digital skills economy and self-directed learning”.

The NWU’s Dr Mentz rounded off the last day of the conference with her address titled “Putting self-directed learning research and practice to the test: Looking at the past, challenging the future”.