High-quality learning: harder to achieve than we think?

CONTEXT: High-quality learning in the context of medical education can be defined by current conceptions of a deep approach to learning and studying, in combination with metacognitive skills such as personal organisation and reflection on learning. Modern undergraduate education aims to provide an environment that will promote high-quality learning, but this is not as easy to achieve as it might at first seem. Part of the difficulty arises because it is student perceptions of the learning and assessment environment that determine the adopted approach to studying and these are notoriously hard to predict.
OBJECTIVE: To generate a detailed understanding of aspects that facilitate and inhibit high-quality learning within an innovative, undergraduate medical programme.
METHODS: We carried out semi-structured interviews with Year 2 undergraduate students.
RESULTS: Self-directed, problem-based and vocationally relevant activities appeared to promote high-quality learning. Unanticipated barriers to high-quality learning in this setting included a perceived lack of useful feedback on learning, the assessment of applied medical knowledge for a subset of underperforming students, anatomy as a curricular topic and the quantity of information to be assimilated in medicine.
CONCLUSIONS: Only by understanding the barriers as they are perceived by students can we design evidence-based modifications to curricula that are likely to be successful in promoting high-quality learning.