Enhancing diagnostic and intervention-related skills with adaptive feedback: Study protocol for a simulation-based learning study on symptoms of learning and behavioural difficulties

Background This project uses simulated digital case scenarios to analyse diagnostic and intervention-related skills of teacher, school psychology, and medical students concerning primary school children’s difficulties in mathematics and their hyperactive, inattentive and impulsive behaviours. Here, the conditions for an effective use of macro- and micro-adaptive feedback – powered by natural language processing (NLP) methods – compared to static feedback will be the focus. The aim is to identify effective types of feedback for students who differ in their prior diagnostic and intervention-related knowledge. Methods/design We compare three groups of university students (medical students, school psychology students, and pre-service teachers) with varying professional specialisations and corresponding knowledge bases as learning prerequisites using simulated digital case scenarios. In validation study 1a, we analyse students’ case processing and validate our measures for students’ prior knowledge. Furthermore, the results are used for informing the design and refinement of micro- and macro-adaptive feedback. Validation study 1b investigates static, macro-adaptive, and micro-adaptive feedback. In Study 2, by using “think aloud”-methods and trace data, we investigate to what extent learners benefit differently from the processing of digital case scenarios in the absence of any feedback and what kind of cognitive, metacognitive, motivational learning processes occur. In study 3, we investigate how the form of feedback in the digital case scenarios affects students’ acquisition of new diagnostic and intervention-related skills and how students process the different forms of feedback. Finally, Study 4 examines the extent to which different forms of feedback are helpful for students with low vs. high prior knowledge. Discussion This project will analyse which benefits feedback with different degrees of adaptivity can provide for learning diagnostic reasoning and the planning of related interventions, especially when considering potential interaction effects with learners’ varying prior professional as well as diagnostic and intervention-related knowledge and diagnostic processing.