The student-teacher faces a rowdy class.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to have that kind of behavior in here,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 too loud in here to move on.鈥�
The students don鈥檛 pay much attention. A boy in the back row, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, slumps his shoulders. Another student waves his hand aimlessly.
鈥淣ah, just stretching,鈥� he replies, when the teacher asks if he needs something.
Scenes such as that aren鈥檛 uncommon in urban classrooms, but in this case there is one critical difference: These students are avatars鈥攃omputer-generated characters whose movements and speech are controlled by a professional actor.
Each of the five characters鈥攁ll with distinct abilities, personalities, and psychological profiles, and even names like 鈥淢aria鈥� and 鈥淢arcus鈥濃�攚ere created as part of the TeachME initiative at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando. There, teacher-candidates can practice in a virtual classroom before ever entering a real one.
Real-time classroom simulations like TeachME, supporters say, offer promise for a host of teacher-training applications. Through them, candidates could gain hands-on practice with urban students, or practice a discrete skill such as classroom management.
Most of all, such simulations give teachers in training the ability to experiment鈥攁nd make mistakes鈥攚ithout the worry of doing harm to an actual child鈥檚 learning.
鈥淚t allows the teacher to fail in a safe environment,鈥� said Lisa Dieker, a professor of education at the University of Central Florida and one of the designers of TeachME. 鈥淩eal kids, trust me, will remember in May what you said to them in August. You can鈥檛 reset children.鈥�
The Florida project is among the most sophisticated experiments with classroom simulations to date, but other projects offer similar benefits. The computer program , which mimics a classroom setting, can be populated with up to 18 students with different features and emotional characteristics鈥攁ll of whom will respond differently to stimulus from a teacher-candidate in charge of the virtual classroom.
Though not yet widespread in teacher education, the idea of classroom simulations could receive more attention in coming years, especially with the student-teaching aspect of teacher preparation now receiving scrutiny. Groups such as the , or NCATE, are pushing for teacher education programs to step up the variety, length, and quality of their field-based experiences.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a realization that we have to be able to ensure that we can prepare teachers well for the demands of practice,鈥� said Pamela L. Grossman, a professor of education at Stanford University who has written about the place of simulations, among other methods, for practicing teaching skills.
Virtual Classrooms
Both TeachME and simSchool are the product of unusual partnerships linking teacher-educators, researchers, and experts in simulations or immersive media.
Though widely used to train professionals in medicine, nursing, and aviation, simulations are uncommon in the preparation of teachers. Many aspiring educators get about 10 to 14 weeks of student-teaching in local schools.
The idea behind the simulations isn鈥檛 to replace traditional face-to-face student-teaching, but to give teacher-candidates the ability to experience specific skill-building lessons, explains David C. Gibson, an associate research professor at the at Arizona State University in Tempe.
The principal designer of simSchool, Mr. Gibson was inspired to undertake the project by the work of researchers at Western Oregon University. There, researchers created a computer program allowing teachers to examine student profiles, come up with a preassessment for a lesson, administer it, view student-achievement results, and reflect on them.
Like a board game, it was 鈥渢urn-based,鈥� contingent on teachers鈥� inputting an action before generating information. But Mr. Gibson wanted to pursue a program that got deeper into classroom practice鈥攈ow teachers respond minute by minute in a dynamic environment.
鈥淲hat happens when you shut the door and you鈥檙e teaching? What are you going to say? What are you going to do? What happens when the kids change?鈥� Mr. Gibson said. 鈥淚 wanted to take apart the black box that was actually the classroom.鈥�
The simSchool program essentially puts the Oregon project into real time. While a teacher-candidate uses the system, it tracks how student performance rises and falls. Such variation depends on the complexity of the tasks the user has assigned, the personalities and abilities of the students, and students鈥� engagement with each activity.
As in a real classroom, these children don鈥檛 sit statically in place. Depending on how engaged they are by the teacher鈥檚 actions, students will pay close attention鈥攐r distract their peers. That aspect, Mr. Gibson says, gives teacher-candidates insights into features like differentiation. A task that one student masters may be too complicated or frustrating for another, and teachers must analyze student data to respond appropriately.
A complex emotional, perceptive, and cognitive profile determines how each child responds to an assigned task. Emotional factors include openness to learning new things, conscientiousness, degrees of extroversion, agreeableness, and sensitivity. The perception variables include visual, auditory, and kinesthetic abilities. Finally, the cognitive dimension represents the student鈥檚 general capacity to learn.
Thanks to the research and development efforts of a team housed at the University of North Texas, in Denton, the program has expanded to allow users to customize individual simulated students, with 2 million discrete combinations possible.
Character Actors
At the University of Central Florida, the TeachME program expands upon the artificial-intelligence programming often used in simulations. It draws on a professional actor to represent all five characters created for the project.
The characters are based on a psychological framework different from simSchool鈥檚, but are no less diverse in their attributes. Each avatar has a individual profile, and every actor who participates in the program is trained on all five students鈥� personalities and profile. Many of the actors, in fact, hail from a fine-arts program at UCF combining aspects of psychology, improvisation, performance, and philosophy.
To use TeachME, a teacher-candidate stands in front of a large screen depicting the five students at their desks and begins to teach. In a separate lab across campus connected by camera and microphone, the actor鈥攚ho鈥檚 already received a copy of the lesson a teacher-candidate will be using that day鈥攔esponds to the teacher鈥檚 direction, operating each character in turn. Motion-capture instruments replicate the actor鈥檚 gestures for each character on the screen.
鈥淭he interactors know the personality of the character they鈥檙e playing, but that鈥檚 it,鈥� said Charles E. Hughes, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and a director of the at UCF, where the TeachME application was created. 鈥淭hey know the backstory, they know the family life, but they have no script associated with what that person has to say; what they do is totally driven by the circumstances.鈥�
Jacqueline A. Rodriguez, now the program director of TeachME and a doctoral student at the Florida university, was among those initially skeptical that the student-avatars could resemble students in an urban classroom. It took just minutes in the simulation to change her mind, she said.
鈥淢y question was, were they going to respond like students I鈥檝e taught before, or were they going to be like kids in suburbia鈥攙ery vanilla and easygoing?鈥� said Ms. Rodriguez, a Teach For America veteran from the District of Columbia public schools. 鈥淭hey weren鈥檛.鈥�
A project like simSchool lacks live actors, but the basic program could be expanded to include more-complex emotional profiles for the characters, Mr. Gibson said. He would also like to see the cognitive variables in the program multiply to allow for more-nuanced achievement patterns among the virtual students.
Right now, he said, 鈥渋t鈥檚 like saying this student is going to be an A student or a B student. It鈥檚 highly inadequate, but unless we have a national impetus to build on the model and move it forward, we鈥檙e kind of stuck there.鈥�
Next Steps
The projects are limited in the number of teacher-candidates that experience them as part of their initial preparation, but both are starting to receive recognition.
During its last accreditation review at the University of North Texas, NCATE approved use of simSchool for up to 10 of the 40-plus required hours teacher-candidates must spend observing classrooms before they begin formal student-teaching.
TeachMe is available for all teacher education instructors at the University of Central Florida, though it鈥檚 not a mandatory part of the teacher education curriculum.
There is still much to learn about the ideal uses for the systems. Ms. Grossman of Stanford Unversity would like to see additional attention paid to a framework for breaking down and analyzing specific teaching skills鈥攇etting the proper grain size of the individual practices that novice teachers need to master in the simulated setting.
Such frameworks for underpinning the simulations are more advanced in medicine and nursing, she said. But a school classroom requires more-complex interactions than the comparatively easier-to-simulate, one-on-one doctor-patient relationship.
鈥淭he work of teaching always requires, in essence, the crowd,鈥� Ms. Grossman said. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 complex about it is the ability of the person to manage multiple interactions at once.鈥�
Research on both systems is ongoing, and partner universities are extending the projects in new directions.
Old Dominion University, in Virginia, Utah State University, and West Virginia University, among others, are in various phases of incorporating TeachME into their own programming; the Utah university has developed two new student-avatars.
Cost is potentially an issue for wide-scale use of the TeachME system. It costs university partners about $6,000 for equipment, plus $120 per hour of use.
The research base for simSchool is gradually expanding as well. In spring 2007, researchers at the University of North Texas conducted a small study on two classes of preservice candidates; those who used the system reported, on average, higher levels of 鈥渋nstructional self-efficacy.鈥� In lay terms, they felt more resilient in the face of instructional setbacks and more confident in trying alternative approaches.
Tandra L. Tyler-Wood, an associate professor of learning technology at UNT who has conducted much of the research on the simSchool program, says the finding indicates that the system could help improve retention rates among newly minted teachers. On-the-job-frustrations are particularly likely to cause novice teachers to change schools or leave the profession.
Ms. Tyler-Wood is now using the programmable aspects of simSchool鈥檚 students to approximate the features of students with disabilities鈥攔educing auditory perception approximates deafness, for instance.
Whether the appetite for simulation in the field of teacher education will match the growing sophistication of the systems remains to be seen.
The appeal of TeachME might be less immediate for today鈥檚 teacher-educators, who grew up without much computer technology, than for a group of budding Gen Y teachers who grew up playing World of Warcraft and tinkering with electronic gadgets, Ms. Rodriguez postulated.
Still, as more teacher-educators experience simulations, Ms. Dieker expects the new tools to gain legitimacy. Among her triumphs was the discovery that a group of middle school students themselves found the student-avatars to be lifelike approximations of their peers.
Before using the system, during a field trip to the TeachME lab, many of the middle schoolers expected to easily play the boss of their own classrooms. Ten minutes with Maria, Marcus, and their virtual peers changed their minds, Ms. Dieker says.
鈥淲hen they leave the simulator, they say, 鈥業鈥檒l never be mean to my teacher again.鈥� 鈥�
