Faizal A. Haji

Rethinking programme evaluation in health professions education: beyond ‘did it work?’

Context  For nearly 40 years, outcome‐based models have dominated programme evaluation in health professions education. However, there is increasing recognition that these models cannot address the complexities of the health professions context and studies employing alternative evaluation approaches that are appearing in the literature. A similar paradigm shift occurred over 50 years ago in the broader discipline of programme evaluation. Understanding the development of contemporary paradigms within this field provides important insights to support the evolution of programme evaluation in the health professions.

Measuring cognitive load: performance, mental effort and simulation task complexity

Interest in applying cognitive load theory in health care simulation is growing. This line of inquiry requires measures that are sensitive to changes in cognitive load arising from different instructional designs. Recently, mental effort ratings and secondary task performance have shown promise as measures of cognitive load in health care simulation.

Healthcare Training Enhancement Through Virtual Reality and Serious Games

There has been an increase in the use of immersive 3D virtual environments and serious games, that is, video games that are used for educational purposes, and only recently serious games have been considered for healthcare training. For example, there are a number of commercial surgical simulators which offer great potential for the training of basic skills and techniques, if the tedium of repeated rehearsal can be overcome. It is generally recognized that more abstract problem-solving and knowledge level training needs to be incorporated into simulated scenarios. This chapter explores some examples of what has been developed in terms of teaching models and evaluative methodologies, then discusses the educational theories explaining why virtual simulations and serious games are an important teaching tool, and finally suggests how to assess their value within an educational context. The tasks being trained span several levels of abstraction, from kinematic and dynamic aspects to domain knowledge training. The evaluation of the trainee at each level of this hierarchy necessitates objective metrics. We will describe a unifying framework for evaluation of speed and accuracy of these multi-level tasks needed for validating their effectiveness before inclusion in medical training curricula. In addition, specific case studies will be presented and research results brought forward regarding the development of virtual simulations, including those for neurosurgical procedures, EMS training, and patient teaching modules.

Thrive or overload? The effect of task complexity on novices' simulation-based learning.

Fidelity is widely viewed as an important element of simulation instructional design based on its purported relationship with transfer of learning. However, higher levels of fidelity may increase task complexity to a point at which novices’ cognitive resources become overloaded.

Operationalising elaboration theory for simulation instruction design: a Delphi study.

The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of incorporating the Delphi process within the simplifying conditions method (SCM) described in elaboration theory (ET) to identify conditions impacting the complexity of procedural skills for novice learners.

Practising what we preach: using cognitive load theory for workshop design and evaluation

Theory-based instructional design is a top priority in medical education. The goal of this Show and Tell article is to present our theory-driven approach to the design of instruction for clinical educators. We adopted cognitive load theory as a framework to design and evaluate a series of professional development workshops that were delivered at local, national and international academic conferences in 2014. We used two rating scales to measure participantsʼ cognitive load. Participants also provided narrative comments as to how the workshops could be improved. Cognitive load ratings from 59 participants suggested that the workshop design optimized learning by managing complexity for different levels of learners (intrinsic load), stimulating cognitive processing for long-term memory storage (germane load), and minimizing irrelevant distracters (extraneous load). Narrative comments could also be classified as representing intrinsic, extraneous, or germane load, which provided specific directions for ongoing quality improvement. These results demonstrate that a cognitive load theory approach to workshop design and evaluation is feasible and useful in the context of medical education.