Teaching students the skills to become confident independent learners has emerged as a requisite ability to assure success in online and mobile learning. Many students lack the training, experience and knowledge to learn autonomously and know surprisingly little about the language-learning resources available to autonomous language learners. Furthermore, learner autonomy is a concept many students are uncomfortable with as they are dependent on face-to-face learning with the guidance and supervision of an instructor. This has limited student success in the remote learning that has been forced upon them in the past year. Consequently, it has become imperative that students have the knowledge and skills to learn independently.

In this presentation, learner autonomy is presented as a teachable concept in the classroom that will help students learn better on their own away from teacher guidance and a skill they can use for lifelong learning. Such topics as learning to learn autonomously, degrees of learner autonomy, types of learners and learning styles, defining teacher-student roles related to autonomy and cultural expectations in the classroom will be discussed. Key elements of learner autonomy will be introduced as well as empirical research that assessed the effectiveness of teaching students to become more capable independent online and mobile learners. Participants will come away with a better understanding of how to empower student independence, practical examples of how students have become better autonomous learners, sites and applications for independent online and mobile learning and how remote and mobile learning will inform teaching in the future.