In order to realise their full potential as learners, it is essential that students have good self-directed learning skills. It is also important that students develop their own roles in learning by continuously monitoring their own learning progress, identifying areas of deficit and making a conscious effort towards self-improvement. In this paper, Swapna Naskar Williamson reports on the development and testing of a self-rating scale of self-directed learning in higher education, and considers how it might be used in practice in order to enhance the requisite skills for becoming independent and lifelong learners.

Self-directed learning is considered a key feature in the learning process. Despite the emerging debate regarding continuing education strategies and the effectiveness and pertinence of the learning needs of adult learners, little evidence is available on the measurement of the self-directed learning competence of nurses. The main aim of the study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Self-rating Scale of Self-directed Learning (SRSSDL) in an Italian sample of nurses. The forward-backward translation process of the original SRSSDL was adopted. Forty-one nurses were involved in the test-retest reliability. Internal consistency was evaluated in a convenience sample of 334 nurses working in Northeast Italy. The Italian version of the SRSSDL has demonstrated good reliability (Pearson coefficient 0.73) and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha coefficient 0.94). The SRSSDL was found to be a valid and reliable instrument in the Italian context. This study has implemented the external validity of the scale by its application to a different population and context in its first validation process.

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Background: Student evaluation is the lifeblood of learning/teaching and the SRSSDL tool is a vehicle to enable students to achieve their goals.

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