Developing Students’ Clinical Reasoning Through Digital Clinical Cases In Pediatric Education

Abstract

This article examines the design of digital clinical cases to develop students’ diagnostic reasoning in pediatric education. It aims to formulate instructional approaches that support the selection of clinical information, comparison of alternative hypotheses, and revision of decisions in response to new evidence. Comparative analysis of purposively selected empirical studies and pedagogical modeling were used. The proposed scenario structure combines progressive disclosure of information, retention of students’ initial explanations, discussion of contradictory evidence, and transfer to a similar new case. Three tables organize case components, instructional responses to reasoning errors, and criteria for reviewing digital case quality. The practical contribution is a set of task designs that make students’ reasoning visible alongside their final answers. The educational effectiveness of these proposals requires separate empirical evaluation.