How do students learn from a simulation? Is it when they are engaged in the experience? When they prepare for it? The answer is neither, according to Dr. Amber Kool. Her dissertation research revealed that students learn most when they debrief and reflect on their simulation learning experience. In this episode, Kool shares her thoughts on best practices for teaching virtual lab simulations. Kool is Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Arizona College of Nursing, where her students will use Labster as part of their post-Covid return to face-to-face and hybrid learning.
Memorable Moments:
Amber: [00:06:26] We are a society that needs people to be critical thinkers. We need people to use clinical judgment. And we can't activate that thought process if we aren't asking them to apply learning.
Amber: [00:08:12] The student doesn't necessarily learn in the simulation, whether it be virtual or traditional. That's not when they're engaging in their learning because they don't know what they don't know. So we ask them to read, whether it's prepping for a virtual simulation or virtual experience, we ask them to prep, we ask them to read the objectives, and then we put them in there. And once they're in the experience, all of a sudden they're challenged with 'I wasn't prepared for that.'
Amber: [00:09:58] If we look at experiential learning theory, it says you've learned something, no matter what it is, you're going to use previous experience to make future decisions. Well, if I never debriefed, if I never reflected on my activity or that learning experience, how can I pull actual knowledge in future experiences to make a new decision
Amber: [00:13:51] How do you expose a student? How do you make them apply something that seems so abstract to them? And the virtual simulation and Labster specifically gave us that tool. I think that it is a very valuable resource, like I said, to bring it in. We can use it as prep work. We can use it as a pre experience. We can run them through the lab together, put them in small groups.
Amber: [00:16:38] So the focus of the last year, I think, highlighted the need for the development of soft skills. We can teach everyone how to start an IV, but can teach someone how to communicate with the toddler that you need to start the IV on?
Episode 10 Transcript:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1irs6A8DHrfEQZA8cJAPy0eIW_ucpOA1Zh2uNicSblgU/edit?usp=sharing
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