Investigating educational affordances of virtual reality for simulation-based teaching training with graduate teaching a
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Investigating educational affordances of virtual reality for simulation‑based teaching training with graduate teaching assistants Fengfeng Ke1 · Mariya Pachman1 · Zhaihuan Dai1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study investigated the affordances and constraints of a VR-based learning environment for the teaching training of university graduate teaching assistants in relation to the task, goal-based scenarios, and learning support design. Seventeen graduate teaching assistants participated in a multiple-case study with an OpenSimulator-supported, simulation-based teaching training program. The study indicated that the VR-based learning environment fostered participants’ performance of interactive teaching and demonstrative instruction, while training them to notice and attend to students’ actions/reactions during the instruction. On the other hand, there is a competition between physical reality and functional intelligence in the VR environment. We propose the integration of experience, affordance, and learner analyses in planning and designing a VR-supported learning intervention. Keywords Virtual reality · Teaching training · Graduate teaching assistant · Simulation-based learning · Educational affordance analysis
Introduction Virtual reality (VR) has been implemented as a collaborative, highly interactive learning platform to support a variety of educational activities in both formal and informal learning settings (Hew and Cheung 2010; Merchant et al. 2014). In comparison with other computerized programs, VR supports in situ, simulated practice to enable the transfer of skills between taught and real contexts, and provides a multiuser and embodied space for real-time and multimodal interactions. A recent metaanalysis on virtual reality-based instruction in K-12 and higher education (Merchant et al. 2014) indicated that VR was effective in improving learning outcome gains * Fengfeng Ke [email protected] 1
Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, College of Education, Florida State University, 3205‑F Stone Building, Tallahassee, FL 32306‑4453, USA
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(FEM = 0.36; REM = 0.41). Virtual reality is now considered a mature technology appropriate for pedagogical use (Mikropoulos and Natsis 2011). On the other hand, current design and development efforts of VR-based learning are still driven by “common-sense extrapolations” rather than a solid, educational affordance analysis (Dalgarno and Lee 2010, p. 25; Mikropoulos and Natsis 2011). Educational affordances refer to “characteristics of an artifact that determine if and how a particular learning behavior could possibly be enacted within a given context” and whether the learning intentions of the user can be invited and supported (Kirschner 2002, p. 19). It is argued that for a VR-based learning environment, an educational affordance analysis should be conducted during the design and evaluation processes to match learning tasks, prompts, and supports with the func
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