Qualitative interviews
All 29 students who returned for the second robotic simulator session completed the post-session interview immediately following the second task. Through the participant interviews, we identified three main themes of student experience: (1) Novices encounter initial challenges with the robotic simulator that improve with exposure, (2) Practice with the home simulation kit impacts the robotic simulator experience, and (3) The fidelity of the home simulation kit could be improved (Table Qualitative results summary1. Lack of Familiarity – Orienting to the robot– Understanding goals andrules2. Lack of technical skills– Body positioning– Instrument control– Needle handling3. Visuospatial challenges– Depth perceptionFamiliarity—“I wasn’t fully cognizant of all the rules and also just conceptually figuring out how to use the clutch, when to use it, and how to orient yourself while you’re using it was a little bit tricky for me.”Technical skills—“The first time it was hard to maintain both of the arms of the robot in a distance so they don’t collide with themselves, that was challenging. I think I did that a couple times and…I was penalized.”Technical skills—“Just getting used to the clutch was really hard.”Technical skills—“I had a really hard time figuring out the orientation for the needle.”Visuospatial skills—“I feel like just getting used to the disconnect between what you’re seeing and then where your hands are, because not seeing your actual hands while you’re doing something.”1. Technical skills– Needle handling– Wristed movements– Ambidexterity2. FamiliarityTechnical skills—“The needle threading for the home kit was pretty good because you get the dexterity of how to go about putting the needle in one hole and getting it out the other one.”Technical skills—“[The kit helped] needle control and kind of determining which ways I needed to twist my wrist and my fingers in order to get [the needle] to drive through, which definitely translated over here [at the robotic simulator].”Technical skills—“Just being a little bit more ambidextrous with how I did the needle driving activity and trying to use the other hand because I’m predominantly right–handed and I think for the first time I was using predominantly my right hand, but I was…more conscious of which hand I was using [during the second session].”Familiarity—“I learned how to go about the needle driving activity most efficiently, how to angle my hands so that I could basically just put the needle through very easily and seamlessly.”1. Model design transferability– No clutch on home model– More resistance thanrobot2. Mechanical challengesModel design—“If you’re actually threading the needle through the real sponge, you’re going to feel resistance, but here [on the robotic simulator], you don’t feel anything.”Mechanical challenges—“The tips of the tweezers didn’t have much grip either, and so you’re… pressing really, really hard to hold the needle in place, because otherwise it was just slipping out of place. So I guess maybe swap to a different type of tweezer that might have more grip.”