I'm not sure it's possible to force someone to learn who doesn't want to. From what I can tell, the article is basically saying that giving the students some form of agency and trust is a better way to motivate them to take it seriously than being a strict top-down disciplinarian. This fits with my experience (both from when I was a student and in my interactions with younger people as an adult), and I would expect that most people who have seriously evaluated this strategy would come to the same conclusion. It's not perfect, as some students may try to take advantage of things or will still phone it in, but the same thing happens with every other way of trying to engage with them.