“Employee ‐ develop yourself!” Experiences of self‐directed learners

Describes the experiences of participants in a self‐directed manager development programme. Qualitative data was collected from questionnaires administered at two points, one mid‐semester and the other at the end of the semester, over two years, in order to elicit information about the issues and drawbacks which were important to the students when engaged in self‐directed and experiential learning. The study was designed to examine participant views and thoughts in three main areas: the aspects of the approach they found most useful; the aspects they found least useful; and ideas about improvements to the programme or how things could be done differently from their own perspective. Reports the main findings which included a majority view that self‐directed approaches are more demanding than traditional approaches but worthwhile, leading to “deep” rather than “surface” learning. Sheds important light on the subjective experience of independent learning, which will be of interest to academics and organizations alike.