Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
1334507787
Link(s) to full text
LAC copy
Author
Cheung, Jeffrey Jack-Hou.
Title
Knowing How and Knowing Why: Integrating Conceptual Knowledge in Simulation-based Procedural Skills Training to Support Learning Transfer.
Degree
Ph.D. -- University of Toronto, 2019.
Publisher
[Toronto, Ontario] : University of Toronto, 2019
Description
1 online resource
Abstract
In health professions education (HPE), simulation technologies are used to imitate aspects of real-life clinical skills and scenarios with goal of preparing clinical professionals for real-world practice. Though much effort has gone into incorporating simulation into HPE curricula, questions remain about simulation-based instruction can be designed to support trainees' ability to transfer skills learned in simulation to novel contexts. Instructional designs that promote trainees' conceptual understanding have shown to enhance their ability to transfer across a variety of domains but has yet to be operationalized the context of healthcare simulation. In this dissertation, I investigate the relationship between instructional design, conceptual understanding, and skill retention and transfer in the context of simulation-based procedural skills training with novice medical trainees. Building on research in education, cognitive psychology, and clinical reasoning, this work assesses the impact of instructional designs that seek to integrate two types of knowledge that underlie procedural flexibility and expertise: conceptual knowledge (i.e., knowing why) and procedural knowledge (i.e., knowing how). In three randomized, controlled experiments, I test the cognitive mechanisms of effective integration of conceptual and procedural knowledge by manipulating the availability and presentation of these knowledges in instructional material. Results show the integrated instruction increases in trainees' conceptual knowledge, which in turn mediates improvements in trainees' skill retention and transfer. Study 1 establishes the benefits of video-based instruction that integrates conceptual knowledge (in addition to procedural knowledge) for trainee's skill retention and transfer. Study 2 demonstrates that video-based integration is most effective when it encourages trainees to create causal linkages between procedural and conceptual knowledges at the level of cognition, a process called cognitive integration. In Study 3, we replicate previous findings and attempted to bolster cognitive integration by designing simulators that make the causal relationships between procedural and conceptual knowledge visible and interactive. Taken together, the dissertation operationalizes cognitive integration in simulation-based procedural skills training and provides evidence that integrated instruction can enhance simulation-based skill retention and transfer. Hence, lower fidelity training that emphasizes developing an integrated understanding of procedural and conceptual knowledge may be superior to repeated practice with more realistic simulations.
Other link(s)
tspace.library.utoronto.ca
hdl.handle.net
Promoted: Local to Global Cooperative
Subject
Expertise
Instructional Design
Knowledge Integration
Procedural Skills
Simulation
Transfer of Learning