The LAs were observed to practice an array of pedagogical
skills. Some skills, such as various forms of
questioning and whole group involvement, appeared to
be easy to implement and were implemented frequently.We
were surprised to find that some skills, such as use of real
world examples, were not implemented more frequently.
Occasionally, the student avatars actually made a bid for a
real world example. For example, in the following passage
the student-avatar “CJ” tries to relate velocity to her
experiences with driving, but the LA does not carry on
the example.
CJ: Um, yeah that’s like, like how hard you’re going or
how fast you’re going. Right? Like how, like how much
you, like when you step down on the gas of your car,
that’s like, like making you, like have more velocity.
LA-2A: Right, so if you speed up, you have a change in
position over time, right? Make sense?
There are several reasons that the LAs may not have made
use of real world examples. First, the opportunity may not
have arisen; however, as demonstrated above, this was not
the case for some LAs. Second, the LAs may not have
“framed” the interaction with virtual students as an appropriate
place to use real world examples [53]. However, there
is evidence against this explanation as well. The student
avatars made bids for real life examples, which should have
caused the LAs to reframe the interaction if they had
previously been excluding such examples. Additionally,
two LAs discussed planning or failing to use real life
examples in the simulator. Thus, it appears that the most
likely explanation is that the LAs need more practice in
linking the physics concepts to real life examples. It should
also be noted that LAs should not be expected to demonstrate
every skill within a 5 min interaction.
Another skill the LAs made less use of than expected was
formative assessment or proximal formative assessment.
Although we did not outright code the LAs’ simulator
interactions for formative assessment, we expected formative
assessment events would be marked by cycles of
eliciting students’ prior knowledge and uptake, and we
did not observe many such cycles. Six LAs discussed
formative assessment during at least one written or group
reflection. Some of these LAs discussed difficulty implementing
formative assessment, even proximal formative
assessment, with the simulator. For example, LA-1C wrote,
“I tried to use formative assessment to assess where students
were in their understanding. This was difficult and not
always successful because the students were at such varying
levels. It was not as useful as it is in a longer period of time
in studio classes” in her AAR. It may be the short teaching
intervals did not give the LAs enough time to practice some
of the skills they desired, although the short time interval is a
fairly realistic match to the amount of time most LAs can
devote per group in their real life teaching assignments