Effects of high and low prior knowledge on construction of a joint problemspace

The participants were 4th-year medical students designing a clinical trial to test a new hypothetical anticancer drug. They worked with the computer s imulation the Oncology Thinking Cap in facilitated groups that differed in terms of their prior knowledge. Both groups engaged in constructive activit y and reached similar endpoints. The groups differed qualitatively in how t hey went about constructing and navigating the joint problem space. The hig h-prior-knowledge group used their knowledge to help them construct plans, evaluate their actions, and stay focused on the goals of the experimental d esign task. The low-prior-knowledge group searched through the data exhaust ively and used them to generate their plans. They were unsystematic in thei r planning and interpretation. They used the computer representations in th eir reasoning and worked at mapping the connections between the representat ions. The computer scaffolding played an important role for both groups, bu t the facilitator played a greater role in the low-prior-knowledge group.