Abstract:

Simulation is an education intervention that offers several advantages for learners to develop their decision making skills in a safe environment that is amenable to differing levels of control. In this paper a collaborative simulation development process is reported between Canadian and UK participants from different disciplines but sharing a common interest in simulation based learning development. It includes an approach to simulation planning grounded in constructivist learning theory applied to a clinical decision making scenario. A simulation specification was generated to integrate a range of desired learning outcomes that informed the selection of a robust technology to facilitate the learning experience. An advantage of this approach was to embed not only a practice based approach to clinical decision making that could be guided by a tutor but also to create a space where students could collaborate inter-professionally within their national setting to understand how a situation might be interpreted in different ways. The clinical scenario is both research informed and aligned to information about best practice. Beyond this is the opportunity for internationalisation via shared learning comparisons of scenario based decision making amongst learners from different countries, for example to understand how different policy approaches shape practice about the same issue. In this way the simulation design can be demonstrated as an intervention likely to add value to learning by being pedagogically led, technologically robust and sustainable, and a design that can be adapted to create new iterations incorporating, for example, variations in types of participation and complexity and focus of the scenario.

The development process generated reflections about four dimensions relating to ongoing development of clinical based simulation scenarios including: pedagogical (the fidelity and control of the environment), participants (the actions of learners and staff in the environment) technology (choices over design teams including learning technologists to manage the software or solely academic control of development, editing and publishing) and institutional (such as licence management, intellectual property and hosting arrangements). A model representing the learning from this process is offered as a reference to inform real world decision making simulation design.

Keywords:

Simulation, decision making, virtual world.