Virtual Students Are Used to Train Teachers

Today's top story by Stephen Sawchuk at Education Week.

Computer-generated "students" give aspiring teachers the opportunity to test their strategies without doing harm to real ones.

Krista Vince Garland teaches a science lesson to the virtual students in the TeachME Lab at the University of Central Florida.
—University of Central Florida TeachME-File

Stephen Sawchuk writes, "The student-teacher faces a rowdy class."

“We’re not going to have that kind of behavior in here,” she says. “It’s too loud in here to move on.”

The students don’t pay much attention. A boy in the back row, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, slumps his shoulders. Another student waves his hand aimlessly.

“Nah, just stretching,” he replies, when the teacher asks if he needs something.

Scenes such as that aren’t uncommon in urban classrooms, but in this case there is one critical difference: These students are avatars—computer-generated characters whose movements and speech are controlled by a professional actor.

Each of the five characters—all with distinct abilities, personalities, and psychological profiles, and even names like “Maria” and “Marcus”—were 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.
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Source: Education Week.