Is self-teach 'newspeak' for learn? You learn by observing, researching and practicing. I guess I am getting old.

I thought self-teaching, self-taught, and similar were jargon that has been around for a long time. In the historically recent programming community especially it's all over the place: people who never did formal CS education teaching themselves how to program and are as or more effective than their Stanford peers. The difference between self-teach and learn is that the former is an attempt at learning through one's own will and direction, and the latter is merely a state of understanding the path to which can be from many directions (self-directed, teacher-directed, or just simple observation of the world around you).

>What students need is the ability to self-teach. They need to be able to recognize when there is a gap in their knowledge, know how to find instruction in those topics, and have the motivation to follow through on actually learning it.

In my university, this is what separates the good CS grads from the bad. You have no idea how many students expect the professor to hold their hand through a lab or project and are unable/refuse to learn on their own through Google, the textbook, or the official documentation.

bingo. if you have problem solving skills...guess what? you can solve problems.