Applying the Purpose, Autonomy, Confidence, Engrossment Model of Motivational Design to Support Motivation for Continuing Professional Development

Health professionals' motivation is a key determinant of their continuing professional development (CPD) outcomes. Therefore, CPD providers must ensure that they design CPD activities to support health professionals' motivation; this process is referred to as motivational design. The aim of this article is to introduce CPD providers to the PACE (purpose, autonomy, confidence, engrossment) model of motivational design, and describe how we applied the PACE model to create two online modules for an interprofessional audience. The PACE model builds on other available models of motivation design by offering theoretically informed strategies to support autonomous motivation, a specific quality of motivation that is associated with more effective learning processes and outcomes. Our experience suggests that CPD providers can use the PACE model to guide their motivational design efforts. We also encourage CPD researchers to test the theoretical assumptions that inform the PACE model.