Facilitating Medical Students' Diagnostic Competence Via Situated, Case-Based Learning With Worked-Out Examples: The Influence of Errors and Feedback

Basing oil an analysis of students' difficulties with diagnostic tasks, an example-based approach was realized in the context of a situated, case-based computer learning environment in the field of arterial hypertension. In order to enhance the effectiveness of the approach, two additional measures were implemented: erroneous examples and elaborated feedback. In the context of ail experimental study the two measures were varied experimentally. 153 medical Students were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions of a 2 x 2-factorial design (errors vs. no errors, elaborated feedback vs. knowledge of correct result [KOR]). The acquisition of conceptual knowledge was supported by erroneous examples. Errors in combination with elaborated feedback turned out to be the most effective learning condition for action-relevant aspects of diagnostic competence. These effects were independent from prior knowledge and time-on-task. Ill summary the results emphasize the effectiveness and economy of situated, case-based learning with examples.