• David A Cook, Stanley J Hamstra, Ryan Brydges, Benjamin Zendejas, Jason H Szostek, Amy T Wang, Patricia J Erwin, and Rose Hatala.
• Division of General Internal Medicine, Mayo Medical School, MN 55905, USA. cook.david33@mayo.edu
• Med Teach. 2013 Jan 1;35(1):e867-98.

BackgroundAlthough technology-enhanced simulation is increasingly used in health professions education, features of effective simulation-based instructional design remain uncertain.AimsEvaluate the effectiveness of instructional design features through a systematic review of studies comparing different simulation-based interventions.MethodsWe systematically searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, ERIC, PsycINFO, Scopus, key journals, and previous review bibliographies through May 2011. We included original research studies that compared one simulation intervention with another and involved health professions learners. Working in duplicate, we evaluated study quality and abstracted information on learners, outcomes, and instructional design features. We pooled results using random effects meta-analysis.ResultsFrom a pool of 10,903 articles we identified 289 eligible studies enrolling 18,971 trainees, including 208 randomized trials. Inconsistency was usually large (I2 > 50%). For skills outcomes, pooled effect sizes (positive numbers favoring the instructional design feature) were 0.68 for range of difficulty (20 studies; p < 0.001), 0.68 for repetitive practice (7 studies; p = 0.06), 0.66 for distributed practice (6 studies; p = 0.03), 0.65 for interactivity (89 studies; p < 0.001), 0.62 for multiple learning strategies (70 studies; p < 0.001), 0.52 for individualized learning (59 studies; p < 0.001), 0.45 for mastery learning (3 studies; p = 0.57), 0.44 for feedback (80 studies; p < 0.001), 0.34 for longer time (23 studies; p = 0.005), 0.20 for clinical variation (16 studies; p = 0.24), and -0.22 for group training (8 studies; p = 0.09).ConclusionsThese results confirm quantitatively the effectiveness of several instructional design features in simulation-based education.

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