This study examined diagnostic problem solving and post-problem reflection in medical students, residents, and experts. Participants worked on three internal medicine cases from the computer-based learning environment, BioWorld. The analyses focused on general performance measures, problem solving operators and knowledge states, and post-problem reflection activities. Verbal protocol data was collected and examined using a coding scheme developed and implemented with the N-Vivo software. Students and residents differed in overall diagnostic accuracy, and significant differences were found in solution time and the number of utterances made for cases of varying difficulty. Differences in the use of operators and knowledge states are highlighted, although the groups were quite similar on many measures. The experts spent considerably more time working on case history information, consistently engaged in planning, and always generated the correct diagnosis (among others) in response to case history information. During post-problem reflection students used more case history data than residents. Expert models highlight the experts' problem solving cycle that consisted of reviewing data, identifying hypotheses, and planning. Post-questionnaire results indicate that participants found the cases to be interesting, useful for learning, but not especially difficult. Finally, several implications are drawn for the future development of BioWorld for medical training.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.84992 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Faremo, Sonia |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002177918, proquestno: AAINR06294, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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