Students’ Short-Term Learning Processes in the Workplace and the Role of the Learning Environment: An Intensive Longitudinal Study

Health sciences undergraduates, including veterinary students, face many cognitive, motivational, and emotional challenges during workplace learning, especially in constantly changing learning environments like clinical rotations. A better understanding of students’ short term learning processes in the workplace is needed. This study investigated how the use of various learning strategies, motivation, and emotions changed over the course of 1 week and assessed the impact of the learning environment on these changes. Using a quantitative daily diary, the researchers collected intensive longitudinal data on learning strategies, motivation, emotion, and learning environment from 188 veterinary students over 75 days during clinical rotations in the ninth study semester (winter semester 2022–2023). The students rotated between workplaces on a weekly basis. The authors analyzed the data by conducting mixed-effects modeling with weekday nested in week and week nested in students for each aspect of workplace learning. The results revealed a linear decrease in most aspects of learning over the course of the week. A positive perception of the learning environment buffered the decrease in most aspects of the current week, but not of the following week. However, a positive perception of the learning environment in the current week was positively associated with some learning aspects at the beginning of the subsequent week. In conclusion, this study highlights the dynamic nature of learning processes during workplace learning in clinical rotations, emphasizing the critical role of the learning environment. These findings underscore the importance of fostering supportive and well-structured environments to enhance student learning.