Participants in the virtual lab condition also outperformed those in the traditional condition with regard to procedural skills. This finding was unanticipated because all assignments
that were included in the virtual lab aimed at making and testing qualitative predictions
about the behavior of electrical circuits; none of those assignments targeted the acquisition
or practice of procedural skills. The finding that procedural skills also improved could be an
indication that in the virtual lab condition bootstrapping or iterative
knowledge development processes took place; that is, the acquisition of conceptual understanding and other forms of knowledge and skills (e.g., procedural
skills) can mutually support and stimulate each other. An increase in one type of knowledge
facilitates an increase in the other type of knowledge, which facilitates an increase in the
first, and so on. The existence of interrelations between procedural and conceptual knowledge has been presumed for decades. For example, conceptual knowledge helps learners to
recognize and identify key concepts when studying or diagnosing a problem. As a result, a
better conceptual understanding of the problem will increase the likelihood that the learner
will select the appropriate problem-solving procedure, thus enhancing procedural skills. In
turn, reflecting on or self-explaining the conceptual basis of procedures can help learners
become aware of which concepts play a key role in a problem .
Some evidence for bootstrapping has been found in the domain of mathematics but not so
far in engineering education .