Providing Real-time Feedback for Student Teachers in a Virtual Rehearsal Environment

Research in learning analytics and educational data mining has recently become prominent in the fields of computer science and education. Most scholars in the field emphasize student learning and student data analytics; however, it is also important to focus on teaching analytics and teacher preparation because of their key roles in student learning, especially in K-12 learning environments. Nonverbal communication strategies play an important role in successful interpersonal communication of teachers with their students. In order to assist novice or practicing teachers with exhibiting open and affirmative nonverbal cues in their classrooms, we have designed a multimodal teaching platform with provisions for online feedback. We used an interactive teaching rehearsal software, TeachLivE, as our basic research environment. TeachLivE employs a digital puppetry paradigm as its core technology. Individuals walk into this virtual environment and interact with virtual students displayed on a large screen. They can practice classroom management, pedagogy and content delivery skills with a teaching plan in the TeachLivE environment. We have designed an experiment to evaluate the impact of an online nonverbal feedback application. In this experiment, different types of multimodal data have been collected during two experimental settings. These data include talk-time and nonverbal behaviors of the virtual students, captured in log files; talk time and full body tracking data of the participant; and video recording of the virtual classroom with the participant. 34 student teachers participated in this 30-minute experiment. In each of the settings, the participants were provided with teaching plans from which they taught. All the participants took part in both of the experimental settings. In order to have a balanced experiment design, half of the participants received nonverbal online feedback in their first session and the other half received this feedback in the second session. A visual indication was used for feedback each time the participant exhibited a closed, defensive posture. Based on recorded full-body tracking data, we observed that only those who received feedback in their first session demonstrated a significant number of open postures in the session containing no feedback. However, the post-questionnaire information indicated that all participants were more mindful of their body postures while teaching after they had participated in the study.