How to convince students that self learning is an important skill? I am teaching beginner programmers with a variety of backgrounds.  Towards the end of the course, we encourage more independent and team based learning rather than lecture based learning.  This is purposeful and many students do understand the benefits.  Some of which are:


learning how to learn
reading technical documentation 
finding and vetting resources
discussing and sharing with others


There are only a few days towards the end of the course where the students truly research a topic themselves or teach one another, but even so, there are always 1 or 2 students who feel that they are wasting their time or that they are there to be taught and not learn stuff on their own.

What are some ways that I can highlight to students that learning how to learn a new technology (by using its documentation, online resources and your peers) is skill worth practicing for software developers?
In a few days there is almost nothing you can do. Certainly you can't change their habits and attitudes about how to learn in just a few days. You can try, however, to change their behavior by making their current behavior unprofitable. If it is still possible, make the final work an important part of the evaluation. But that is only a band-aid on the problem, not a cure. 

It is true that a number of students want to "be learned". I tell students that "I can't learn you." But my own behavior, not just talk, has to reinforce that. If I teach primarily through lectures and evaluate them based mostly on what they can retain from the lectures, then it is perfectly natural that they take a fairly (or completely) passive role in a course, leaving all of the "learning" up to me. 

But if you teach the course again, you can start early and come to a real solution - of behavior, at least, and possibly attitude. Rather than give lectures, give projects, from the beginning. Answer questions often, if not always, not with the answer, but with the strategy for getting the answer. To be successful they will need to change behaviors learned in other courses that aren't very effective in the long run. With adult students the effect is probably even stronger, as they have a longer history of passive learning. 

So, from the beginning, stress projects, teamwork, finding your own answers, verifying your own programs, telling you things rather than asking you things, and so on and so forth. 

Search around for "Active Learning" and learn to teach in a compatible way.