Date:  August 13, 2025

Facilitator:  Larry Gruppen

Competency:  Health Education Context

The learning environment is usually invisible. It’s like the water in a fish bowl – invisible to the fish until it dries up or turns green. However, when you think about the context in which you work and learn, you quickly realize how important and complex it us. This session will focus on the learning environment as part of the Health Education Context competency. We will consider how to diagnose problems in the environment and potential interventions. The attached paper(s) describes a theoretical model for understanding the learning environment and we will use that to guide our discussion.

References

• Promoting Disability Inclusion Through an Expanded Conceptual Framework of the Learning Environment   DOI: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000006148

• Conceptualizing Learning Environments in the Health Professions.  doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000002702

Learning Objectives:

• Categorize the core design aspects that distinguish observational versus experimental research methodology​

• Summarize observational study designs that are relevant to education research​

• Differentiate educational questions or problems that are well suited to observational study designs versus other approaches​

• Appraise and critically analyze the use of observational study designs in the current medical education research literature