Deliberate Error vs Error Prevention | Which One is Better for Learning?
Teaching is often based on getting students to avoid making mistakes. In medical education, when we instruct the students, we aim to help them to make as low number of errors as possible in their learning period. For instance, showing the correct ways to perform a surgical operation is the most preferred way to teach. But, what if we use a strategy that gets them to commit errors deliberately rather than error prevention? What would be the effect of this strategy on learning?
A research group from Denmark carried out an experiment to answer this question. It’s a really interesting study.
The pretty flamingo is getting ready to present the results of the experiment.
Watch here or keep reading.
In the study, medical students who has no prior ultrasound experience have been assigned to two groups.
The first group received error avoidance training. They have been instructed to commit as less number of errors as possible during three hours of simulation-based ultrasound training focused on fetal weight estimation.
The second group has been assigned to the same focus in three hours of simulation-based ultrasound training. However, they received error management training instead of error avoidance. They are allowed, even encouraged to commit errors during training. They were aimed to “remember that errors are byproducts of learning”.
To assess participants’ performance, one week after the completion of training, transfer tests were carried out with real patients.
Here are the results.
There was no evidence that shows difference on the number of errors committed by each group during training.
The scores in the transfer test which was conducted with real patients, second group, which is error management group, showed higher performance scores (67.7%) than error avoidance group (51.7%).
The error management group outperformed the error avoidance group on the transfer test in the clinical setting.
But why?
There were no apparent differences in the number of errors committed by each group during training.
So, we conclude that the important thing is not the number of errors, the important thing is how you approach to the errors. The instructions that embrace errors in the error management group would be the key to success. Due to the avoidance strategy, error avoidance group were not needed to reflect on the procedure, they only needed to follow the rules. So, low levels of metacognitive activity could have led to this result.
All in all, we can say that the negative view on errors during training among educators needs to change. We need to focus on “using errors for learning” rather than “learning to avoid errors”.
Remember, errors are byproducts of learning.
If you want to read more, you can find the link to the article at the description of the video: https://youtu.be/DFagJ77QYH8
See you and adios para amigos!
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