TeachLive at Buffalo State: Training Teachers in an Immersive Mixed Reality Classroom

The TeachLivE™ virtual classroom is an immersive, mixed reality simulator (housed at Buffalo State) that infuses in-vivo learning within the safety of a simulation lab to effectively prepare and enhance teacher performance. Participants interface with the real-time classroom simulator and software application allowing interaction between a live human instructor and five animated, computer-generated student avatars, which are controlled by a live remotely-based "interactor" to react to certain commands of the human instructor. The current research project is funded by a SUNY Innovative Instructional Technology Grant award and has two foci: an examination of the effect of virtual rehearsal on pre-service teachers' use of specific evidence-based pedagogical practices, and an examination of the feasibility and utility of the TeachLivE™ simulation lab as a primer to classroom instruction in a variety of courses across departments within the SUNY system.