While many simulation-based training systems focus on following procedures, experts report that when they follow procedures, they apply their conceptual knowledge of the system to assist them. This conceptual knowledge, often referred to as a mental model, helps technicians overcome confusion from ambiguous instructions, reinforces information in the procedures, assists in recovering from mistakes, and provides a functional understanding of the equipment in case technicians need to troubleshoot. Psychological studies show that conceptual knowledge can lead to greater accuracy in following procedures. Thus, for procedural tasks, training should incorporate the underlying conceptual knowledge and help students to build accurate mental models.

This paper will illustrate how a simulation that was designed to train procedures was enhanced to foster the development of mental models. First, we worked with experts to determine the mental models that should be taught. Second, we designed the instruction to be adaptive so that students only got the content that they needed. Otherwise the instructional content is an unwelcome and unhelpful interruption. Third, we designed the instruction to be interactive to engage students in the construction of their own understanding.

This paper will report formative and summative results from a study comparing the performance of technicians using the standard procedural training system and a training system enhanced to train the conceptual knowledge as well. Students using the enhanced training system scored 24% better on post-test performance, even though the additional time for the training only increased overall training time by approximately 1%. The study was conducted over a 12 day instructional block, and produced a 1.3 standard deviation improvement on the post-test, which was statistically significant, p < .05.