Crafting the Reality: Approaches for Designing Teaching Simulations in Virtual Reality
Chair(s): Yizhen Huang (University of Potsdam, Deutschland)
Diskutant:in(nen): Eric Richter (University of Potsdam)
Being able to enact core teaching practices in realistic scenarios is critical for teacher candidates’ development, a notion often reflected in the call for more practice-based teacher education (Grossman et al., 2009). Simulations is a form of “situated learning” that provides a contextually rich environment for teachers to encounter and address challenges, experience the consequences of their actions, and modify their actions in a low-stakes setting (Kaufman & Ireland, 2016). Thus, simulations can be seen as approximations for professional practice (Duchatelet et al., 2022).
In a variety of subject areas, professional training, higher education, and vocational education, simulations have emerged as appealing learning environments (Chernikova et al., 2020). While there is still a lack of broad usage of simulation as a learning aid in teacher education, there are several interesting forms of simulations that may be implemented that reflect different degrees of professional task approximation; for instance, role-plays and computer simulations (Stürmer et al., 2024).
Among various forms, virtual reality (VR) based simulation has uniquely bridged standardized setting and realistic experience. With the exponential growth of consumer-level VR hardware and software during the last decade, both the creation and application of VR teaching simulations has become increasingly feasible and scalable (Huang et al., 2023).
What remains to be established is how VR technology can best be leveraged in designing simulation opportunities for teachers. The current symposia will thus present three diverse research projects with the aim to address recent methodological and empirical advances in designs of VR-based teaching simulations.
Contribution 1 reported a unique, design-based approach to construct teaching simulations with divergent branching narratives in a immersive VR classroom system. Contribution 2 examined expert-novice differences in recognizing student disturbances in another immersive VR classroom system and found that multimodal data (eye and body tracking data) can be used to detect group differences. These results demonstrated that teachers’ expertise level could influence perceptions in teaching simulations. Contribution 3 explored the design and effectiveness of video simulations inside VR in the context of parent-teacher conferences.
This symposium will follow the standard format: the chair's introductory remarks will take about 3 minutes in a 90 minutes-minute session, followed by 20 minutes for each presentation (60 in total), 15 minutes of discussant critique, and 12 minutes of discussions that involve all session participants and audiences.
Beiträge des Symposiums
Teachers in the Loop: Prototypical Applications of Branching Narrative in VR-Based Science Teaching Simulations
Yizhen Huang1, Axel Wiepke2, Christina Hildebrandt2, Stephen Tobin2, Sascha Bernholt3, Lars Höft3, Ilka Parchmann3, Ulrike Lucke2, Mirjam Steffensky4, Thilo Kleickmann5, Amitabh Banerji2, Dirk Richter2
1University of Potsdam; Kiel University, 2University of Potsdam, 3IPN - Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, 4University of Hamburg, 5Kiel University
In acquiring professional expertise, teachers benefit greatly from practicing in situations simulating authentic professional practice (Stürmer et al., 2024). Virtual reality (VR) technology has long been employed to simulate professional situations (Jensen & Konradsen, 2018), yet few efforts have been aimed at documenting and evaluating practices for designing teaching simulations in VR. Developed within the context of DigiProMIN, the present contribution outlines our first efforts at design-based teaching simulations in VR targeting science teaching.
The VR system (TeachR; Wiepke et al., 2021) that enabled the design of teaching simulations uniquely affords both standardization and adaptivity. It is standardized in the sense that all aspects of the situation (students’ characteristics, classroom layout, etc.) can be predefined and programmed strategically. Meanwhile, the system’s "human-in-the-loop" (HIL) approach enables adaptation of the simulation in response to teachers’ actions, since with HIL, virtual students can be controlled by another human (coach) in real time.
In our simulations, HIL is achieved by means of a branching narrative structure feature called a conversation tree. Branching narrative structure is a set of “pre-plotted nodes that when reached, determine the subsequent authored narrative content (story branch)”(Moser & Fang, 2014, p. 623). Each node could be interpreted as an “if-else” statement that the coach evaluates. Their evaluation then diverts the simulated situation towards a particular event, such as a student's answer or action.
To design simulations for science teaching using the conversation tree feature, we followed four major steps in establishing prototypes. First, the targeted core practice and related scenario concept were identified based on the research group’s subject expertise. For instance, in the context of science education, we addressed teachers’ competencies to a) notice misconceptions about variable control strategy and guide students to design a fair test; b) notice and react to high-risk laboratory situations; and c) address and respond to students’ various mental models of molecule structure. The scenario concepts could thus be described as the lesson phase of planning, conducting, and discussing observations of an experiment.
Second, the scenario concept was augmented and contextualized with real science classroom recordings in combination with expert consultants from science teacher education programs. In one of the simulations (fair test), for instance, we identified 19 video clips from the meta video portal for instructional videos (Manfred, 2024) that ultimately shaped the simulation design.
Third, students’ verbal responses characterizing typical misconceptions were designed based on past frameworks in classroom dialogue research (Barnes et al., 2023; Dini et al., 2020). The sample dialogue from these studies was adapted to the particular simulation scenario. For instance, reproducing positive effects without manipulating the independent variable of interest is a typical naive experimental strategy (Zimmerman, 2007). In our fair test scenario, an example student response to the question “How can we find out whether heat speeds up evaporation?” could be “We should dip water on many paper towels and put them in a warm place”.
Finally, by combining the scenario concept and the students' responses, a branching narrative structure could be developed. The structure in this project services three purposes a) teachers can encounter most students’ responses (training opportunities); b) students’ responses are authentic to the situation; c) it is feasible for the coach to evaluate the node in real-time. Therefore, the teachers’ possible actions and responses need to be envisioned comprehensively yet categorized succinctly through the iterative improvement process outlined in the design-based approach (Bakker, 2018).
Moving forward, we will collaborate with practitioners and stakeholders, including preservice teachers, experienced teachers, and teacher educators; in the format of co-design workshops and expert interviews.
Putting Teachers into Action: Simulating Multitasking in a VR Classroom
Richard Göllner, Philipp Stark
University of Tübingen
Theoretical Background
Teaching is a demanding and complex endeavor that requires teachers to make numerous decisions in real-time (e.g., Berliner, 2001; Borko, 2004). Not only must teachers explain new learning content using diverse materials and organize various learning activities, but they must also ensure students' attention during classroom instruction. This multitasking nature of teaching, where multiple events occur simultaneously, adds to its complexity and challenges.
Consequently, any efforts to enhance teachers' effective teaching must consider these multitasking demands inherent in a typical lesson and even a single classroom situation. Existing attempts, such as the identification of critical events in video-taped classroom observations (e.g., Santagata et al., 2007; Wolff et al., 2016), potentially fall short and may not adequately reflect the actual requirements of classroom teaching. Additionally, the need to coordinate behaviors for achieving effective teaching receives less attention, and thus, the exploration of potentially fruitful attempts for teachers’ professional development is still an issue (see Huang et al., 2023).
In the present study, we used an immersive virtual reality (IVR) to investigate the performance of expert and novice teachers in identifying student disturbances during a virtual lesson. We simulated a classroom that requires multitasking from teachers and allowed for its modeling using multimodal data to detect group differences and potentially inform how expertise is developed in a realistic classroom setting.
Method
A total of 15 expert teachers (mean age = 38.53, SD = 8.92) and 25 novice teachers (mean age = 26.08, SD = 8.98) took part in the study. Teachers had to give a 12-minute presentation to 18 virtual students in a VR classroom. During teaching, the virtual students displayed either attentive behavior or active disruptions (e.g., talking to seatmates). A total of 21 disruptions occurred during the teaching task. The participating teachers were instructed to identify and stop disruptions as they would in a real classroom setting. During the task, the integrated eye-tracker of the HTC VIVE was used to detect gaze targets (the objects participants looked at). Additionally, we tracked the recognition of relevant disruptions by teachers via controller clicks. For analyzing the data, a multilevel logistic regression model was conducted with the recognition of a disrupting student as the dependent variable. Teachers' expertise, as well as their gaze and movement behavior during teaching, were used as independent variables.
Results
The results revealed a statistically significant difference between expert and novice teachers in recognizing a student's disruption, with expert teachers showing a higher probability of recognition than novice teachers (b = 0.20, SE = 0.09, p < .01). This difference was explained by the time teachers spent their attention on the virtual students (b = 0.44, SE = 0.12, p < .001) and teachers' body movements during teaching (b = 0.13, SE = 0.06, p < .05). Expert teachers demonstrated a higher change of their location in the classroom than novice teachers, which in turn was associated with a higher probability to recognize students’ disruptions. In addition, the inclusion of interactions between teachers’ behavior data seemingly contributed to the prediction of disruptions. Establishing a procedure that allows for testing teachers’ behavior in its high-dimensional meaning is currently being applied to the data and will be presented at the conference. Our study findings replicate expertise effects known from previous research (e.g., Huang et al., 2023) and underscore the potential of IVR as a highly effective tool for enhancing teacher training and professional development in a realistic learning setting.
Effects of using VR training for skill development and reflection in the context of parentteacher conferences
Friederike Knabbe, Yannik A. Escher, Hannes M. Petrowsky, David D. Loschelder, Poldi Kuhl
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Although counseling in the context of parent-teacher conferences is one of the core tasks in the daily work of teachers (Hertel, 2009; KMK, 2022;), there is hardly any preparation for this in the university context beyond theoretical discussion. Recent technological developments, in particular virtual reality (VR), offer an innovative way to provide student teachers with a realistic and active practice opportunity for conducting parent-teacher conferences. To date, however, the full potential of VR in practicing such situations in the context of teacher education has not been studied. Additionally, potential mediating factors such as anxiety, self-efficacy expectations, or motivational aspects have not been subject to research thus far.
In a recent pilot study with n = 15 student teachers, we found that participants were highly motivated to use VR as a practice opportunity, gained counselling competence, and showed a decrease in task-related anxiety over the course of the VR training, (Knabbe et al., 2024).
To better understand the processes underlying VR-based trainings, we ran our main study to empirically test and extend the “Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning” (CAMIL; Makransky & Petersen, 2021). This model theoretically asserts that presence and agency are the general psychological affordances of learning in VR. Our present research aims at comparing and evaluating the effectiveness of a highly immersive VR training in the parent-teacher conference scenario with a chat-based training program. First, by constructing a theoretical model of social skill development in immersive environments, that is, extending the CAMIL, but second, also by testing the model and comparing the learning effects to a strong control condition. A follow-up survey is conducted after four months to investigate the long-term effect of the training.
The study follows on a pre-post intervention design and examines the self-assessed effects of a newly developed VR training course for parent-teacher conferences on self-efficacy expectations regarding counseling conferences in the school context and anxiety about parent-teacher conferences.
We currently run the main study and aim at a total sample of N = 110. Participants are student teachers at the Bachelor or Master level of the Leuphana University Lüneburg. Most of the participants have no previous experience with VR, and only a few report previous experiences with parent-teacher conferences.
In preparation, the students were given a case vignette with information about the parental interview to be conducted. They were randomly assigned to either (1) a 3D 180° virtual classroom using VR glasses or (2) the control condition using chats. In both conditions, the participants had to conduct a problem-oriented consultation with a parent figure. The experimental condition in VR was video-based, and the virtual parent figure, who was portrayed by a professional actress, was controlled by the experimenter by selecting the appropriate video. The control condition based on a chat interface for the participants, which was placed on a laptop in front of them. Participants received chat messages from the parent figure and replied in writing. The questions from the parent figure were phrased identically to the VR condition. A pre- and post-survey of the students was conducted to answer the research question about the effects of the training. In both questionnaires, self-assessment was collected, including on self-efficacy beliefs (De Coninck et al., 2020) and anxiety (McCarthy and Goffin, 2004).
We have been conducting the study with an aimed N = 110 participants since the winter semester of 2023/24. In the presentation, the results of the main study will be presented and the effects of VR training on particpants’ counseling self-efficacy beliefs and anxiety will be reported.
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