Engaged Learning: Making Learning an Authentic Experience

I have lost count of the number of education research articles I have read since I came to ETD. I must confess that I would not have pushed myself to read these articles if I were still in school. But I must say that I feel much more enriched or enlightened after reading through all those research articles.

Engaged learning is the key area that this paper is looking at. A few other terms that catch my attention: self-regulatory learning, metacognitive behaviours, authentic learning environments.

I was in awe of the example the paper illustrated: using Problem-based learning approach on medical school students. It sounds so exciting and perfect. But what does it take for the facilitator to achieve this effect? Does the facilitator need certain skills?
One key starting point for engaged learning to take place is to have an authentic problem or driving issue in place. This seems to be a mountain for many. To design such lessons/problems might be too time-consuming to many. It would include problem design and process design. Perhaps, there can be some form of revenue to share all our teachers’ resources and assign a council/body to coordinate this. Then we need not create our own and at the same time prevent duplicates.