Part 3: Debriefing
Role of Debriefing with Experiential Learning Activities
Debriefing refers to the facilitation of learning from the experience and is conducted as a planned, integral element of the learning activity. It is a dialogue between two or more individuals, where they discuss the actions and thought processes involved in a particular case scenario (Johns, Moyer & Gasque, 2017). Besides, it is an essential strategy that allows learners to learn from mistakes and to improve their performance in the future. Debriefs are carried out immediately after the experiential learning activity is concluded when memories of events and feelings about the learning experience are still fresh in the minds of the learners (Johns et al., 2017). The role of debriefing is to identify elements of team performance that went well and those that did not. The discussion focuses on identifying opportunities for improvement at the individual, team, and system-level (AHRQ, 2019). Debriefing adds value to what is already happening or what the learners have learned. It increases awareness of other perspectives and enables learners to enhance their communication and learning skills.
Debriefing aims at enabling learners to clarify, achieve, and even surpass the set objectives. It also uses success or failure as a means of learning and development for the learners. Debriefing makes the learning benefits tangible and provides useful information for the evaluation of the learning activity. It has a role in improving prospects for the effective transfer of learning (Johns et al., 2017). Furthermore, debriefing allows the instructor to communicate to the learners that he/she cares about what they have experienced and value what the learners have to say. It also shows that the instructor is interested in the progress of each learner’s learning and development.
How Debriefing of Selected Learners Will Occur
Once I am confident that the learners are adequately equipped with the required communication and group processing skills and functional knowledge on interprofessional communication, ethics, and civility, I will proceed with debriefing. Debriefing will involve several students who will be selected voluntarily, whose purpose will involve discussing their thoughts on the learning activity. The debriefing of the selected number of learners will follow the three phases of debriefing, namely, description, analysis, and application phases. For the debriefing to be effective, it will be conducted in a way that will support learning and focus on understanding why an action in the case study made sense to the learner.
In the description phase, the instructor will generally draw out perspectives from the learners about how the events unfolded in the case scenario and request them to describe their reactions to these events. Learners will be asked to provide an objective account of what happened during the case study from their unique points of view and to take note of the descriptions and observations shared by other learners (Johns et al., 2017). The instructor will actively facilitate the learners, who will be sharing their points of view and how they have been affected by similar situations. The aim of this phase will be to explore the learners’ rationale for their points of view and close gaps in clinical practice by discussing the pros and cons of actions identified in the case study (AHRQ, 2019). Furthermore, the discussion will help to identify any modifiable systems issues that may have impacted the events in the case scenario. The analysis phase will enable students to determine the level to which the intended learning objectives and performance expectations were met and which actions contributed to the success or failure.
In the analysis phase, the instructor will co-develop priorities for discussion with the learners, balancing the learners’ priorities with any other critical concerns that were identified in the events of the case study. Firstly, the instructor will examine what the students have learned with respect to previous learning, the current case scenario, and the learning objectives and performance expectations (Johns et al., 2017. The students will be asked to discuss what they have learned in the learning activity in relation to what they had previously learned, to the events in the case study, and the learning objectives. Secondly, the instructor will evaluate what the students have learned with regard to similar events and situations from the case study occurring in the real clinical setting (Johns et al., 2017. The students will be asked to discuss what they have learned with respect to what they have experienced or witnessed in their
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