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In contrast to system control, learner control over the selection of learning tasks enables learners to practice self-directed learning skills. Paradoxically, self-directed learning skills are yet prerequisite for effectively controlling and personalizing one's own learning. This is called the self-directed learning paradox. This article presents an overview of different approaches to personalized learning and explores whether shared control, in which the system preselects a subset of optimal tasks and the learner makes the final task selection, offers a way out to this paradox. Furthermore, this article provides guidelines for instructional design based on the concept of shared control. Finally, limitations of the model are acknowledged and theoretical implications for future studies are discussed.

In on-demand education, students often experience problems with directing their own learning processes. A Structured Task Evaluation and Planning Portfolio (STEPP) was designed to help students develop 3 basic self-directed learning skills: Assessing the quality of own performance, formulating learning needs, and selecting future learning tasks. A case study with 10 first-year students in the domain of hairdressing was conducted to evaluate STEPP's use, usability, and perceived effectiveness. Results from student interviews show that usability and use are influenced by several factors. Students with low prior hairdressing skills, a weakly developed personal approach to direct their own learning, and an inclination to update STEPP as part of their weekly routine, use STEPP more frequently than students without these characteristics. Both the supervisor and students who frequently used STEPP perceived its use as a positive contribution to the development of self-directed learning skills. Furthermore, this study provides guidelines for the design of development portfolios in on-demand education.

This experimental study was designed to investigate whether supervision meetings, in which students receive specific advice on how to use a development portfolio to monitor their progress and plan their future learning, helps them to develop self-directed learning skills and improve their learning in the domain. In the first year of a hairdressing program in vocational education, supervision meetings were used to provide students with either specific advice or not. Students in the advice group (n = 21) formulated better learning needs, selected more suitable learning tasks, completed more practical assignments, and acquired more certificates than students in the feedback-only group (n = 22). Interviews also showed that students in the advice group appreciated the supervision meeting more and perceived them as more effective than students in the feedback-only group. Guidelines are provided for the use of development portfolios and the organization of supervision meetings in on-demand vocational education.

An intuitively appealing approach to increasing the flexibility of vocational education and training is to delegate choices on instruction, such as the selection of learning tasks, to students. However, empirical evidence shows that students often do not have sufficiently developed self-directed learning skills to select suitable tasks. This article describes the Informed Self-Directed Learning (ISDL) model, which depicts three information resources supporting students' process of task selection and helping them to develop important self-directed learning skills necessary for effective task selection: (1) a structured development portfolio to support and develop their self-assessment skills; (2) a description of task metadata to help them compare and select suitable tasks; and (3) a protocol for giving advice, which explicitly demonstrates how to use performance results to select suitable tasks. Furthermore, the ISDL model proposes that as students further develop their self-directed learning skills and improve their task selections, the frequency and/or level of detail of given advice gradually diminishes and the choice of available tasks increases. (Contains 1 figure.)