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Table 2 Application of 4-component instructional design

From: Fundamental underpinnings of simulation education: describing a four-component instructional design approach to healthcare simulation fellowships

Component of instructional design

Application within a simulation fellowship

Examples in Debriefing

Structured learning tasks

Create real-life tasks with focused learning objectives toward desired skills acquisition

Provide variability in tasks to develop systematic approaches

Use a standardized learner who offers a difficult debriefing situation

Create difficult debriefing situations where strategies like “sign-posting” or normalization will de-escalate the difficult situation by creating different frames to be debriefed

Supportive information

Offer didactic covering fundamental elements of a topic

Journal club

Describe debriefing architecture and the purpose of each phase

Discuss journal article addressing a debriefing construct or application of debriefing

Procedural information

With skills needing to be automated, offer just-in-time feedback

During a debriefing, when an error is made skipping a phase in architecture, the debriefing is stopped and the learner is made to correct the error

Part-task practice

Focused practice on elements of a complex skill allows for chunking of information and translating it into long-term memory

Practicing the pre-brief in isolation to polish the skill prior to putting it in the larger context of the debrief

  1. The 4-component instructional design addresses the larger program but each topic being learned and how it relates to other topics requires practical considerations and careful design consideration. The table explores these considerations around the topic of debriefing