HOW DOES COMPUTER BASED SIMULATOR-TRAINING
IMPACT ON GROUP INTERACTION AND PROFICIENCY
DEVELOPMENT?

Tor Söderström and Lars-Olof Häll, Department of Education; Tore Nilsson and Jan Ahlqvist, Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Umeå University, Sweden

The aim of this article is to investigate how training in a real time radiology simulator impact group interaction and proficiency development in comparison with conventional group training. Thirty-six students — 20 women and 16 men participated. One group trained with a radiology simulator (simulation group), and the other group analysed pre-produced image pairs (control group). The results show that the main expressed verbal activity in the control group is interpretation, distinguished by a continuous pattern as well as a more academic terminology. In the simulation group the main activity is action proposals/-commenting, distinguished by a fragmented pattern as well as non-academic terminology. The simulation group improved their test results significantly while the control group did not. The differences between the groups in terms of group interaction and proficiency development may be related to the manipulation and the immediate responses of the students´ actions the simulator training offer.