Abstract
To stimulate learners’ autonomy, autonomy-supportive teaching strategies were included in the design of a multidisciplinary elective course on pain. During this course, students explored pain from different disciplinary angles, i.e., from biomedical, psychological, arts, philosophical, and anthropological perspectives. In the course, autonomy was stimulated by giving students freedom of choice, especially in their final assignments. The aim of this study was to explore students’ freedom of choice and students’ perceptions of the multidisciplinary course on pain, particularly students’ perception of autonomy in the light of self-determination theory (SDT). To address the aim of this study, a mixed methods approach was used. Directed content analysis was conducted on a reflective part of the final individual assignment and was used to find categories fitting within SDT and also outside it. In addition to this, the diversity of topics as well as different disciplines present in the final individual assignments was explored to demonstrate students’ freedom of choice. This study shows that the course setup supported students’ autonomy and relatedness and stimulated students’ interest in and relevance to pain. Moreover, it stimulated students’ freedom of choice and stimulated curiosity towards disciplines such as arts and philosophy. Therefore, it can be concluded that we successfully developed a multidisciplinary course on pain in which students are exposed to different autonomy-supportive teaching strategies based on the SDT framework.
Highlights
The elective course was hosted by the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and was part of the bachelor pharmacy curriculum
Students elaborated on the course content, guest lecturers, the unsupervised small group meetings, and whether or not they liked the course setup
We successfully developed a multidisciplinary course on pain in which students are exposed to different autonomy-supportive teaching strategies based on the self-determination theory (SDT) framework
Summary
Learners’ autonomy was originally defined by Holec (1979) as “the ability to take charge of one’s own learning” and has been extensively studied since especially in the field of language teaching and learning [1]. Learners’ autonomy, as defined by Holec, involves motivation and engagement for what needs to be learned as well as skill development of self-regulation in students, enabling them to take responsibility for their own learning. Higher education curricula are being increasingly designed and developed to provide learners with autonomy for their learning, but the extent to which these attempts are successful is unknown. It has been reported that there is discordance between the level of autonomy that the teachers in health professions education think they provide and the level of autonomy that the students perceive [2]. The aim of this study was to explore students’ freedom of choice and students’ perceptions of the multidisciplinary course on pain, students’ perception of autonomy
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