Speed and quality goals in procedural skills learning: A randomized experiment

David A. Cook, Becca L. Gas, V. Shane Pankratz, David R. Farley, Martin V. Pusic

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Purpose: Compare time (speed) and product quality goals in a surgical procedural task. Methods: Secondary school students participating in a medical simulation-based training activity participated in a randomized experiment. Each participant completed eight repetitions of a blood vessel ligation. Once, between repetitions four and five, each participant received a randomly-assigned speed goal or quality goal. Outcomes included time and leak-free ligatures. Results: 80 students participated. The speed-goal group performed 18% faster on the final repetition than the quality-goal group, with adjusted fold change (FC) 0.82 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.71, 0.94; p = 0.01). Conversely, the speed-goal group had fewer high-quality (leak-free) ligatures (odds ratio [OR] 0.36 [95% CI, 0.22, 0.58; p < 0.001]). For the quality-goal group, leaky ligatures took longer post-intervention than leak-free ligatures (FC 1.09 [95% CI, 1.02, 1.17; p = 0.01]), whereas average times for leaky and leak-free ligatures were similar for the speed-goal group (FC 0.97 [95% CI, 0.91, 1.04; p = 0.38]). For a given performance time, the speed-goal group had more leaks post-intervention than the quality-goal group (OR 3.35 [95% CI, 1.58, 7.10; p = 0.002]). Conclusions: Speed and quality goals promote different learning processes and outcomes among novices. Use of both speed and quality goals may facilitate more effective and efficient learning.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)196-203
Number of pages8
JournalMedical teacher
Volume42
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2020

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

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