Developing Essential Skills to Build Learner Autonomy of Students Amid Pandemic

Abstract

The present research paper investigates the essential qualities and skills for building learner autonomy of university students amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors define learner autonomy and single out its components (motivational, personal and competence-based); in addition they describe the four levels of each component, and break the identified qualities and skills into four groups: general, special, intellectual, and psychological-characteorological. The article also sets up the links between learner autonomy components and the necessary qualities and skills to develop learner autonomy in students. The authors conducted an experiment for two spring semesters (2019-2020, 2020-2021 academic years, 120 subjects), and worked out both the factors to keep students motivated and help them develop learner autonomy in the absence of face-to-face communication in class and those which intensify student frustration, dissatisfaction and inefficiency while learning online. Also, the authors provide an analysis into the qualities and skills that have been developed more successfully, and try to find good grounds for the reasons.