Note: This is a first-person account written by Ben Dotger, professor and chair of teaching and leadership in the School of Education.
The drop-off spot for Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan is clogged with taxis and people moving steadily. To clear a path, ambulance drivers chirp their sirens. One of the nation’s oldest hospitals, Bellevue’s modern front entrance is a city-block-long glass atrium. Step inside though, and the atrium leads to a very old brick building—the original Bellevue.
Whitman School students sign in to NYSIM’s SimCapture platform, so their interactions with an actor playing a standardized individual (a less-than-ethical colleague) will be recorded.
Long associated with teaching doctors and nurses, the third floor of the modern hospital houses the state-of-the-art New York Simulation Center (NYSIM). On any given day, NYSIM supports a wide variety of medical simulations for New York University and City University of New York medical students. These simulations use standardized patients, mannequins and an array of medical situations that approximate everything from mental health crises and dislocated shoulders, to appendectomies or the challenges of labor and delivery.
On a Friday afternoon in March, I’m not here for medical simulations. Instead, a cohort of students from Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management will join me to engage in their first simulation. Part of the students’ Whitman Semester in NYC Study Away experience, this financial business ethics simulation is also a first for the School of Education’s (SOE) Center for Experiential Pedagogy and Practice (CEPP).
One year earlier, Erin Draper, Whitman’s director of experiential programs, had introduced herself at CEPP’s official launch. CEPP supports a variety of experiential learning opportunities, including clinical simulations. Derived from medical education’s long-standing use of this teaching method, SOE has pioneered their use with teacher training and pre-professional and extended professional learning contexts.
As of spring 2023, SOE has supported more than 3,000 learners in 63 simulations, many helping future teachers, school leaders and school counselors practice engaging with concerned parents, struggling students or challenging colleagues. CEPP’s launch provides room for expansion of simulations across the University, and Erin’s introduction provided a natural segue to explore partnerships with the Whitman School.
After a few planning conversations, Erin and I settled on the idea of offering a simulation experience to the Whitman study away cohort, a group of marketing and finance majors interning in Manhattan. This meant designing CEPP’s first business-focused simulation.
Following the design pathway of medical and prior SOE simulations, we scheduled two focus groups with Whitman alumni in December 2022. Representing some of the top insurance, banking and investment firms in the U.S., alumni listened carefully to how Erin and I described the experience we hoped to design. They offered a trove of common situations in their respective fields that novices often struggle with. From those rich data, the first Whitman School financial business ethics simulation took shape, described by Erin as “a one-of-a-kind experiential learning opportunity designed to develop students’ decision making, critical thinking, communication and negotiation skills.”
Back in Bellevue, I chat with Sean and Ginny, two NYSIM colleagues who will help me guide the students through their experience. As they sign in on NYSIM iPads, Sean, Ginny and I can tell they are nervous from the pitch and cadence of their voices carrying down the hall.
The day after their simulations, finance students debriefed together in the Fisher Center to explore how each reacted to the same scenario.
After introducing myself, I guide the students to a NYSIM classroom. I briefly overview the concept of a simulation, and I explain why they are in a medical simulation facility. I also tell them this experience is ultimately about “practice”.
Having divided the students into threes, the first trio accompanies me down to NYSIM’s east wing. I give them log-in instructions for NYSIM’s SimCapture platform and a few last-minute reminders. They have all read their Learner Protocol and have enough information to realistically situate themselves in the simulation room they are about to enter.
They already know that in this simulation, they are brand new employees of “Eichberg Wealth Management” focusing on basic financial portfolio management tasks. The Learner Protocol scenario situates them in their office on a Friday afternoon when a knock sounds at their office door and a new EWM colleague enters, ostensibly to chit-chat, but in reality to pressure them into an unethical situation.
The students glance over their shoulders nervously. I remind them that what they’ve gleaned from the Learner Protocol is all I’m going to share with them. What they do and say in the simulation is entirely up to them. Then, I instruct them to enter the rooms and have a seat.
Once they are seated, I run around the corner, to the “actor’s side” of the facility. Sean has cameras turned on in each of the three simulation rooms, and Ginny gives actors the cue. They knock on their room doors simultaneously, step in, and you can hear early snippets of the interactions between each student and their standardized EWM colleague.
About 12 minutes later, the three students emerge, clearly relieved. Their shoulders have relaxed, and they’re breathing easier. Each promises me they won’t share the challenges of the situation with their other peers until they too have a chance to experience the simulation for themselves.
Over the next hour, all nine students engage in this same process of logging in, interacting with the actors and double-checking their video data. As we wrap up late on a Friday afternoon, I remind them of their homework: Watch your simulation video and choose segments to share with your peers.
The next morning, I meet Dave Major, the point-person for the University’s Fisher Center. As we talk, the Whitman students arrive, and over the next 90 minutes, I guide a review of yesterday’s simulation, a whole group debrief that centers the students and their data. One by one, they come to the front of the room and tell me what segment they want to show. Logging in to SimCapture, I access the respective video, locate the time stamp and get out of the way.
From there, the magic happens. Each student is in charge of their own data, and they start talking about what they heardand how they responded. I know their peers are paying close attention, because every couple of minutes one will exclaim, “Oh, I had that same actor!” or, “Wait, what did she just ask you?!”
As we talk, performance patterns emerge across the nine students’ excerpts—and so do students’ questions to each other. I caught myself smiling when I heard one student ask another, “So, I have a question for you guys. When my actor said that, I responded differently. So, why did you make that decision?”
Questions such as this—from one student to another—represent one of the objectives of the process. In a way the actual simulation is not the key; instead, it is the student-centered meaning-making that happens in group debriefs. This is my favorite form of instruction. It is teaching that centers student voice, student data, and most importantly, student-to-student dialogue.
I wrap up the debrief with a whole-hearted “thank you” to the Whitman School students and reflect on how easy this learning experience was to design and implement. Utilizing 17 years’ experience with simulations in the School of Education, the input of Whitman School alumni and the expertise of NYSIM, Erin, Sean, Ginny and I were able to bridge this teaching concept to another Syracuse cohort.
