The Virtual STARR Classroom Simulator

The proposed Virtual STAR Classroom Simulator is an immersive virtual environment where teachers can hone their classroom management skills with virtual children providing a more ethical approach that does not sacrifice a real student’s education. The simulator is scalable for classroom, home and laboratory use. The product captures, simulates and analyzes classroom behavior to provide a realistic simulation for teacher preparation and evaluation of classroom management skills. It is a tool that is consistent in the behaviors that new teachers must learn to manage student learning provides a grounded method with compelling content with measured results to assess a teacher’s mastery of critical components of behavior. This type of consistency is difficult in large-scale education settings because some skills are more ambiguous involving advanced levels of decision-making. For these and other reasons, the use of advanced technologies can provide more uniformity as well as increased use of validated methods that improve teacher preparation and learning experiences. The Virtual STAR Classroom Simulator uses novel technology to capture the dynamic interactive behavior of live classrooms and automate virtual training sessions to be used as a tool that can virtually replay preparation sessions with after-action review providing immediate and compelling feedback.