Communications of the ACM
Virtual Students Are Used to Train Teachers
Krista Vince Garland teaches a science lesson to virtual students in the TeachME Lab at the University of Central Florida.
Credit: University of Central Florida
University researchers have developed two teaching simulation programs aimed at helping student teachers be better prepared when they first enter a classroom. University of Central Florida researchers have developed the TeachME system and Arizona State University researchers developed simSchool. "There's a realization that we have to be able to ensure that we can prepare teachers well for the demands of practice," says Stanford University professor Pamela L. Grossman.
The simSchool system tracks how student performance changes as a lesson progresses. The virtual students will pay close attention or distract their peers depending on how engaging the teacher is.
University of North Texas researchers recently expanded that program to enable users to customize individual simulated students with up to 2 million different characteristics.
From Education Week
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