Learning to Diagnose with Simulations: Introduction

This chapter presents an overview of the theoretical and empirical evidence on the effectiveness of simulation-based learning in higher education for learners in the domains of medical and teacher education. First and foremost, it presents a theoretical framework for fostering diagnostic competences in simulation-based environments. This theoretical framework was utilized to develop the simulations described in this book and contribute to generating further empirical evidence on the effective design of simulation-based learning environments in the context of diagnosis. Moreover, this chapter presents insights from a meta-analytic study supporting the importance of learners’ individual prerequisites as well as the instructional and contextual factors described in the model.