Preservice Teachers’ Emotions and Ambitious Teaching in Virtual Reality Simulation With Artificial Intelligence-Powered Virtual Humans

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Teachers, Teaching, and Design (Table 5)

Abstract

This study aimed to explore emotions and teacher talk patterns of preservice teachers when they are practicing teaching with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual students in a virtual reality (VR) SBL environment. We collected computer-logged natural language data with 22 preservice teachers in this exploratory case study. We employed a heuristic evaluation approach with data mining techniques. The preliminary results of association rule mining suggested that the AI-powered virtual students designed in the VR SBL environment can 1) induce preservice teachers positive emotions while also challenge them to attain teaching goals; 2) facilitate preservice teachers to maintain productive and meaningful ambitious teaching practices. The results informed the design of AI-powered virtual students in VR for preservice teachers.

Authors

• Chih-Pu Dai, Texas A&M University

• Fengfeng Ke, University of Maryland

• Nuodi Zhang, Florida State University

• Sherry A. Southerland, Florida State University

• Alex Barrett, Florida State University

• Saptarshi Bhowmik, Florida State University

• Luke West, Florida State University

• Xin Yuan, Florida State University