Education and Learning Theory

In this chapter, we review the individual learning theories that support why and how we teach with simulation. Learning is an active process by which knowledge is gained through personal experience. As a form of active learning, simulation stimulates the application of knowledge in situations that mimic real life performance. Metacognition refers to the actual types of knowledge the learner is seeking to acquire (e.g. facts, concepts, psychomotor skills, strategies) which can inform the design of simulations. Unlike traditional learning theories which attempt to describe universal tenets of how we learn, expert theory pragmatically defines specific levels of performance, ranging from novice to expert, with an emphasis on using increasing degrees of task and instructional complexity to drive learning. An important aspect of simulation learning is fidelity – how realistic the exercise is relative to real life. The three basic categories of fidelity relate to the simulation environment (e.g. sights and sounds), the learner’s experience of the environment (e.g. their interpretation of the environment as realistic), and the learner’s emotional reaction to the environment. Ideally, a learner is emotionally activated and cognitively challenged to a point just outside of their comfort zone to promote practice with focused feedback in a stepwise fashion to improve performance.