Dear Wendy, 

Thanks for your questions.   The pre-service teachers had 3 opportunities to teach-to-avatars along with lessons designed to enhance their questioning and discussion skills.  The avatars each have their own back-story and are a controlled by a live actor that plays all of the students.

There are a number of advantages with the teach-to-avatar experience.  The students reported that they appreciated the experience of teach-to-avatar because it gave them the opportunity to concentrate on learning the new skills by repeating the same lesson multiple times and because they felt safe to try new things as they knew that even if they made mistakes that these mistakes would not negatively impact real students.  An additional advantage with the teach-to-avatar reported by pre-service teachers was the ability to be able to teach in the evenings after work or other activities.   

One of the other co-presenters will be better able to address your question about the right balance between various teaching experiences. 

take care,

Melissa 

Wendy,

Both teach-to-avatar and field experiences are beneficial for different purposes.  The teach-to-avatar experience provides an opportunity for practicing isolated skills (like questioning and discussion) and receive specific feedback for mastering the discrete skills.  This helps to better prepare teachers to confidently implement effective teaching strategies during field experiences. Time in the teach-to-avatar simulation can reduce the amount of time for developing confidence and skills.

The results of a study in Sweden showed that three hours of simulation training in a small group setting with virtual characters develops pre-service teachers’ efficacy beliefs in teaching mathematics just as much as three weeks of training with real students and significantly more than teaching colleagues during a seminar.

David-

Thank you for your interest and question. The use of human-like avatars fits well with experiential learning and deliberate practice in a way that allows teacher candidates to focus on particular skills, reflect, and then apply new learning to enhance the implementation of skills. The ability to focus on certain skills and have repeated practice is just one way that learning experiences are enhanced. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the avatar teaching experiences allowed teacher candidates to engage in practice that would otherwise have been impossible due to limited access to students and classrooms. In a post-pandemic environment, avatar experiences may continue to be useful tools for providing teaching experiences in areas where there are limited classrooms available or as initial experiences to build skills prior to field experiences and student teaching experiences. This particular project focuses on developing and implementing questioning and discussion skills, so factors such as disruptive behaviors were minimized. However, there are numerous other applications such as classroom management skills, culturally responsive pedagogy, and responding to multilingual learners, to name a few. 

If you would like to discuss more possibilities or have further questions, I am willing to respond.

Cynthia-

Thank you for your questions and your interest! I will begin to answer your questions and some of my colleagues may share their perspectives as well. Based on the initial review of data, this process of engaging in experiential deliberate practice in the asynchronous and synchronous platforms has had a positive impact on pre-service teachers' questioning and discussion skills. Skills were scored using Domain 3b of the Danielson (2013) rubric. Participants engaged in teaching the avatars three times (baseline prior to intervention, after the asynchronous module on questioning, and then the final experience after the asynchronous module on facilitating discussions). Teaching sessions were recorded, randomized, and then scored by independent scorers familiar with the rubric in order to determine if the participants improved in the areas of questioning and facilitating discussions.

The content was primarily science (a scenario on the water cycle), but the focus was on questioning and discussion skills. While there is not a "right" way to interact with the avatars, participants were provided with feedback after each teaching session and the asynchronous activities that overviewed research-based strategies for improving questioning and discussion skills, such as Webb's (1997) Depth of Knowledge for higher-level questioning and other skills for engaging all students to ask and answer questions and respond to each other in discussions. Participants reported that they appreciated having multiple opportunities to teach and improve without the potential for "hurting real students," so there was less perceived risk by participants and therefore an increased comfort level in trying new or different skills and strategies. "Making mistakes" in the context of the avatar teaching experiences would be asking too many low-level questions or not engaging all of the students.

I agree that teachers continue to work on questioning and discussion techniques and that implementation requires a number of strategies to meet the needs of particular students and groups of students. The approach in our study allows pre-service teachers to engage in initial experiences and practice with feedback and learning that provide a foundation for continued growth. The avatars provide a safe space for practice that can then be broadened as the participants engage in real classroom events through field experiences, student teaching, and their teaching careers. We did not expect students to reach a "distinguished" level on the Danielson (2013) framework or to master questioning and discussion skills from this experience. The purpose was to explore if the use of the synchronous and asynchronous virtual simulation platform could positively impact participants' questioning and discussion skills.

I hope this helps clarify the project and answers some of your questions. If you have any follow-up questions, I would be happy to respond.

Thank you so much for your thorough and informative response, Corey.  Sounds like a great project to support pre-service teachers as they begin to try out and build their questioning and discussion skills!