Guidelines for SDL

• Help the learner identify the starting point for a learning project and discern relevant modes of examination and reporting.
• Encourage adult learners to view knowledge and truth as contextual, to see value frameworks as cultural constructs, and to appreciate that they can act on their world individually or collectively to transform it.
• Create a partnership with the learner by negotiating a learning contract for goals, strategies, and evaluation criteria.
• Be a manager of the learning experience rather than an information provider.
• Help learners acquire the needs assessment techniques necessary to discover what objectives they should set.
• Encourage the setting of objectives that can be met in several ways and offer a variety of options for evidence of successful performance.
• Provide examples of previously acceptable work.
• Make sure that learners are aware of the objectives, learning strategies, resources, and evaluation criteria once they are decided upon.
• Teach inquiry skills, decision making, personal development, and self-evaluation of work.
• Act as advocates for educationally underserved populations to facilitate their access to resources.
• Help match resources to the needs of learners.
• Help learners locate resources.
• Help learners develop positive attitudes and feelings of independence relative to learning.
• Recognize learner personality types and learning styles.
• Use techniques such as field experience and problem solving that take advantage of adults' rich experience base.
• Develop high-quality learning guides, including programmed learning kits.
• Encourage critical thinking skills by incorporating such activities as seminars.
• Create an atmosphere of openness and trust to promote better performance.
• Help protect learners against manipulation by promoting a code of ethics.
• Behave ethically, which includes not recommending a self-directed learning approach if it is not congruent with the learners' needs.