SimPharm: How pharmacy students made meaning of a clinical case differently in paper‐ and simulation‐based workshops

Abstract

Abstract Several scholars contend that learning with computer games and simulations results in students thinking more like professionals. Bearing this goal in mind, we investigated how a group of pharmacy students learnt with an in‐house developed computer simulation, SimPharm. Adopting situated cognition as our theoretical lens, we conducted a case study involving 20 undergraduate students to tease out how they made meaning of a clinical case differently in two different contexts: a typical paper‐based workshop and one enabled by SimPharm. The data collected included audio recordings of classroom discourse, focus group interviews and class observations. The findings identified differences in four areas: framing of the problem; problem‐solving steps and tools used; sources and meaning of feedback; and conceptualisation of the patient. These four areas can serve as axes along which future evaluations of educational simulations can be carried out based on their affordances.