A trigger-substrate model of student engagement with learning

BACKGROUND: There is much controversy and disagreement about engagement with learning, in its definition, its causes and its effects. The recent APS book on “Technologies in Biomedical and Life Sciences Education” outlines these controversies. AIM: To develop upon previously proposed engagement models by using trigger and substrate interactions between contributory factors in order to explain how causative factors may have minimal or no effects on learning when required coincident factors are absent. METHOD: Trigger-substrate steps include a longer-lasting, undergirding substrate factor as well as a short-lived trigger factor, which together act as the cause for the outcome. RESULTS: The model that we propose has engagement, effort and use of resources resulting from the triggers of teaching and providing resources, with a substrate of internalized motivation and a sense of belonging. Continuing forward, engagement, effort and use of resources is a trigger for learning and other benefits, and these results require a substrate of strategies and preparedness in the student. Learning can lead to both positive and negative feedback effects via assessment, feedback (from instructors and the institution), and emotions, which can act via metacognition, incentives and social reinforcement, and achievement, identification (of the student with the learning and outcomes), and the educational climate. CONCLUSIONS: Trigger-substrate causality may help to clarify the inconsistencies seen in education results between traditional theories based on teaching and more recent theories that have focused on the learner. The research has been funded by Brighton and Sussex Medical School This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.