Student-Directed Learning: An Exercise in Student Engagement

Student engagement and retention is a concern of many university professors. To engage sophomore-level students in a Sociology of Aging class, I challenged them to design the course in a way that would make the outcome personally meaningful to them. The class was asked to identify specific learning objectives related to the university's course catalog description, to choose assignments that would evaluate their learning, to weight assignments based upon their perception of importance, and to designate due dates for assignments. A qualitative review of their feedback on this exercise is provided.