NRT-IGE: Mixed Reality Integrated Teaching Training for STEM Graduate Teaching Assistants

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

The training of current and future college and university instructors is critical to any adoption of teaching or curriculum reforms. Yet graduate students who are both trained for and pushed toward academic jobs remain unprepared for a key responsibility of these jobs: teaching. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Track to Florida State University will study the design model and effects of a mixed reality integrated training program to provide teaching practice to STEM graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). Integrating 3D virtual reality and body sensory technology, this training program for STEM GTAs will extend the research and development of current STEM GTA training by enabling STEM GTAs to practice, observe, and reflect on teaching in a variety of instructional settings, and it will provide them with a deep understanding of teaching strategies through active experimentation and problem solving. The resulting STEM GTA teaching training model is anticipated to improve teaching in introductory STEM courses, to improve the persistence of underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines by broadening the teaching practices used in introductory STEM courses, and to address specific challenges and needs associated with the variety of STEM graduate students. The project will employ an iterative evaluation process to improve the model over the course of the award, and the results will inform understanding of the effectiveness of technology-integrated professional development for student instructors. The project team will design and develop a mixed-reality integrated teaching training program for STEM GTAs comprised of three components: (1) Environment, a 3D mixed-reality platform, called MILE (Mixed reality Integrated Learning Environment), that enables the simulation and immersive practice of teaching in a variety of contexts; (2) Activity, a semi-structured, MILE-based training program that integrates formal group training sessions with informal self-regulated teaching rehearsal; and (3) Simulated scenarios for skills development, a collection of problem-based teaching scenarios for STEM GTAs to experience in MILE, which will contextualize targeted STEM teaching skills. Adopting a design-based research approach, this project will encompass iterative design processes to refine the mixed-reality integrated teaching training program, and examine its impact on the development of teaching self-efficacy and competence in an interdisciplinary group of STEM GTAs. Data will be collected via both qualitative and quantitative methods to build up a body of evidence on the design generalizations and effectiveness of the mixed-reality integrated teaching training program for STEM GTAs. The project team includes faculty from diverse disciplines including educational psychology and learning systems, computer science, chemistry, and physics. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education. This work is supported, in part, by the Division of Undergraduate Education.