Theory is
fine, but practice makes perfect. With that in mind, education students at
Stonehill College in Massachusetts are gaining hands-on experience in lesson
presentation and classroom management, but without inflicting their
still-wobbly skills on youngsters.
The
Stonehill students are using a new immersive-training platform to practice
their teaching in a virtual-reality simulation classroom. A grant from the
Massachusetts Department of Education and the platform developer, Mursion, are
paying for the technology.
The
students deliver a sample lesson, as they would in a physical classroom, except
that their simulated “pupils” appear on a video screen, similar to characters
in a video game or animated movie. The pupils are programmed to react in real
time to the student-teachers’ directions, and just like their counterparts in
an actual class, they don’t always do exactly what they’re told.
“Students
say it is stressful, but also beneficial to them,” said Kathy McNamara,
education department chair, in a Stonehill release about the program. “They get
feedback before they actually have to go into the classroom. It is insightful
for them to see classroom life unfold. When they react to students, they see
how and why it resulted in a particular outcome. They usually do about six or
seven minutes and they’ll tell you it feels like an eternity.”
Other
students can also watch and discuss how the simulation went. Mursion has also
created simulations for team teaching and parent-teacher conferences.
Stonehill
is among a number of teacher-training programs testing the Mursion system.
