With the generous support from CRLT, our project team developed and implemented the MIRROR feedback tool, which maps four constructs of clinical decision-making. This tool allows for semi-automated support in problem identification and strategy development, specifically targeting clinical management and teamwork skills. This new tool enables instructors to provide more personalized and insightful feedback during reflection-based debriefing sessions.
Our team successfully piloted and implemented two iterations of this tool in the Human Simulation Laboratory that combined the 2nd year dental Respiratory and cardiovascular system courses in the clinical simulation setting. This learning experience is designed to help students better understand and apply difficult concepts in pulmonary and cardiovascular physiology to their future clinical practice.
This study makes several theoretical, methodological, and educational contributions:
First, our findings enhance our understanding of how teams process discrepant feedback information and how facilitation can improve team-level reasoning and co-construction of new understandings. MSF brings feedback processing to a higher level (in terms of depth of processing and team processing). Feedback discrepancies contained in MSF seem to create a learning opportunity for teams to co-construct new understandings. By contrast, when teams only receive feedback from their instructor, they keep moving to different types of information or components without sharing and building upon those different components. They act more as individuals and less as teams. Adding human facilitation to a debriefing seems to help team members engage in high reasoning with each other, build upon each other, and co-construct new understandings (higher and team processing). If teams are only given feedback data (and no facilitation), they tend to make sense of those data, but they stick to individual-level reasoning. In other words, they rather focus on “what do those data mean to me?” than on “what can we learn from each other as a team”?
Second, methodological innovation. The study introduced Ordered Network Analysis (ONA) to analyze team communication patterns in post-simulation debriefings, providing a more comprehensive understanding of team processes (more details in the attached files).
Third, the integration of the Human Simulation Laboratory into challenging dental courses has significantly enhanced the curriculum design. This approach addresses conceptually difficult topics, particularly in respiratory and cardiovascular physiology, helping students better translate critical concepts to their future clinical practice. Building on this, the introduction of multi-source evaluations and the MIRROR tool not only provides a more comprehensive view of individual learner and team performance but also has the potential to promote clinical decision-making skills. By providing an empirical basis for designing future large-scale studies aimed at promoting clinical decision-making skills, the project positions the department as a leader in evidence-based dental education.
Furthermore, this project has fostered interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together experts from various fields such as dental education, emergency medicine, and learning health sciences. This collaborative effort has strengthened interdisciplinary ties across the schools and departments generating to new knowledge in teaching and learning practices that can be applied beyond dental education.
