NEWS UPDATE - simSchool Pilot Scores High with Testers

From September 26 to 29, twenty faculty and instructional technology coordinators from 11 higher education institutions in 6 states took an hour to explore simSchool and discuss their experiences.  Pilot testers remarked, “I liked seeing the simStudents and seeing them react; the conversation categories are a nice teaching tool for my bilingual education preservice students; and the reports can help preservice students think about how students respond and what could be done differently.”

Most people started with the “single student” mode, selecting either a student above, below or on grade level. Then after reading the simStudent’s profile, they selected tasks they thought best suited their particular student and tried a few conversational exchanges. 

Project researchers and evaluators received valuable feedback that is already being incorporated into a revised version of simSchool due out in November 2005.  The feedback fell into three main categories: conversational elements, immediacy of information from the SimStudents, and features that will enhance a novice’s playing experience.

	One new feature called for by the testers will allow a player to establish the climate in the classroom or rapport with a student using new conversational exchanges.

One new feature called for by the testers will allow a player to establish the climate in the classroom or rapport with a student using new conversational exchanges. The conversational exchanges can raise a student’s readiness for learning independent of the effect of a learning task.

For example upon entering the simClassroom for the first time, a player might want to say “Good morning class.” Or a player can tell Mandy Smith who is sitting at her desk blowing bubbles to “Please pay attention.

With these modifications, simStudents can grow or decline along the dimensions of persistence, emotional stability, intellectual openness, extroversion, agreeableness through a conversational exchange, irrespective of whether there is a task present that might be lowering or raising academic performance.  This brings simSchool closer to a model of the classroom where successful teaching depends on tapping into not only a student’s learning preferences and expected performance levels but also their personal characteristics.

In the enhanced version, simStudents will react immediately to each move that a player makes with a brief statement such as “This is hard” or “ I get it” to let the player know whether they are on the right track. Additionally, a player will be able to click on an individual simStudent and immediately see current academic and emotional status.  

Reports, too, will get a make over based on pilot testers suggestions that we provide separate reports for academic and emotional growth, information on how long each student was on task and disruptive, how much simStudents learned. Several people also suggested that simSchool create a novice or tutorial mode that a player uses to learn the rules of the game, the constraints of the environment, and the moves that lead to a winning state.

Next on simSchool’s agenda is to have these same faculty use simSchool with their preservice students in mid-November.  After revising simSchool based on feedback from these November testers, we will release simSchool for public use in the spring with an announcement at the SITE 2006 Conference in Orlando Florida. Next page: Register for simSchool