Teacher's Skill Improvement by Role-Play and Simulations on Collaborative Educational Virtual Worlds

Abstract

This study looked at teachers' role-play and simulations in order to increase teacher's skills in psycho-pedagogical support on educational virtual worlds. We put forward a proposal to encourage the use of 3D scenarios where teachers can improve their skills for situations of cultural and ethical concerns that require a high level contextualization. We organized the study around improvement of those skills related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. The ultimate aim was to investigate whether educational virtual worlds or Massively Multiuser On-line Learning (MMOL) platforms can improve such skills through training teachers in real and virtual simulations and role-play. The study makes use of descriptive statistics and the Standards Performance Continuum to measure the use of diverse standards in a teaching improvement process. Results suggest that MMOL platforms support the development of more effective teacher control of problematic school situations when these platforms are used collaboratively. Our findings indicate that MMOL platforms could be understood as a social environment with an emphasis on group awareness and cohesion.

The use of virtual reality for public health education with reference to Syrian refugee camps

“…VR has been used with positive results in a variety of disciplines such as engineering and architecture (Burnley, 2007;Doyle, Dodge, & Smith, 1998;Izard & Méndez, 2016). Reports indicate that training/teaching in VR is at least as effective as real-world training (Barrett, Stull, Hsu, & Hegarty, 2015;Harrington et al, 2017;Khanal et al, 2014;Stone, Watts, Zhong, & Wei, 2011) with the advantages that it is safer to make mistakes (Johnson, Levine, Smith, & Stone, 2010;Lorenzo, 2014), students find it engaging (Harrington et al, 2017;Lee, Sergueeva, Catangui, & Kandaurova, 2017), motivating (Fonseca & Redondo, 2013;Redondo et al, 2014) and it can provide greater information uptake through the provision of multiple learning resources in the spherical environment (Harrington et al, 2017).…”

From Medicine to Education: Adapting Simulation-Based Training to the Professional Development Training Models for Educators

“…In Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) platforms like Second Life and Multiuser Online Learning (MMOL) platforms users are represented by avatars that interact in a shared 3D space, giving them awareness of each other's actions [19]. Research indicates that teachers trained on these types of platforms exhibit greater use of recognized teaching standards than teachers trained through face-to-face methods [20] as well as increases in their teaching self-efficacy [21]. Simulationbased learning also shows promise for training teachers to work with students with disabilities and students experiencing psychological issues.…”

Introduction to the Special Section on Group Awareness in Collaborative Social Learning

“…The first article entitled "Teacher's skill improvement by role-play and simulations on collaborative educational virtual worlds" by Lorenzo (2014), proposes the adoption of a virtual multi-user online system as a teacher training platform. In particular, the immersive virtual context allows teachers to not only take a more active and open role to better understand learner features such as their prior knowledge and experiences in order to construct teaching activities, but also encourage teachers' involvement and group awareness through the use of figurative identities and avatars.…”