Simulation-Based Education in a Counseling Skills Course: A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study

Abstract

Simulation-based education (SBE) is a technique that introduces students to real-world experiences (Gaba, 2004) in a safe way (Holmes et al., 2023). Scholars have suggested that SBE may be a promising means of enhancing counselor education (e.g., Pope & Hilliard, 2024). We recruited a sample of N = 12 counseling skills students who completed up to 12 simulation-based education (SBE) activities using Simucase (2025) across one semester. We conducted an embedded, qualitatively-driven mixed methods pilot study (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017) to understand participants’ perspectives on and impacts of the SBE activities on their perceived counseling self-efficacy and multicultural competence. Qualitative findings from a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) indicate students experienced an expanded understanding of the work of the counselor following engagement in SBE, alongside difficulty integrating the SBE activities with information from the skills course. Quantitatively, students reported statistically significant increases in perceptions of their counseling self-efficacy and multicultural competence after completing a one-semester counseling skills course that integrated SBE activities. Implications for how counselor educators may integrate SBE in general and to support counseling skills development are explained.