The General Medical Council directs medical schools to facilitate lifelong learning skills among students. Trainee Doctors are encouraged to “Reflect, learn and teach others, acquire, assess, apply and integrate new knowledge, learn to adapt to changing circumstance and establish the foundations for lifelong learning” (General Medical Council, 2009). It is essential, that for learning to be effective in achieving these aims, it must be a process in which the student actively participates. With such active learning, any knowledge gained is more likely to be retained by students, who will thus learn to apply it to different contexts. Rather than merely inculcating students with facts, active learning strategies aim to “upskill” them (Svinicki, 1998, Michael, 2006). In our first and second year medical physiology, pathology and microscopic anatomy courses we gently introduce students in lectures and tutorials to “active learning” strategies. This gentle phased introduction is necessary as our medical student cohort is composed of 80% school leavers used to secondary level didactic teaching. Strategies used include “gapped” lecture guides replete with tasks to be completed, as detailed by Richardson (2008), and case based tutorials with no definitive answers given (Wood, 2003). We surveyed student attitudes to these strategies in module review documentation distributed to students at the conclusion of each module. Modules surveyed were the first year “cells tissues and organs” (CTO) module and the second year “physiologic basis of clinical practice” (PBCP) module. In each of these modules, students were invited to make free-form comments on what they liked about the module and what they disliked. Comments in favour of the “active learning” strategies (gapped lecture guides with tasks and case based tutorials) were counted and compared with those against the strategies. A total of 546 student comments were collated for the study. There were 13 comments in favour of the “active learning” strategies against 27 against them. The vast majority of positive comments on teaching in these modules praised clear didactic instruction from lecturers, with considerable resistance to anything beyond passive transmission of clear information in classes. Our findings reflect anecdotal data from student consultative fora where active learning techniques are regularly challenged by student representatives. This furthers pressure on academics to accede to student requests for more didactic instruction, given the importance of popularity in the National Student Survey (NSS) in this age of tuition fees and competition for student numbers. It raises the debate about whether we, as academics, should continue to pursue educational best practice but risk poor student satisfaction.