The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the impact of stress, strategies for coping with stress, and professional identity development of pre-service teachers when teaching to avatars. Research participants consisted of 7 pre-service teachers enrolled in a college of education practicum course at a university in the southeastern…

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations offering work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities were no longer able to support student placements, resulting in many institutions searching for a range of innovative solutions. Many have redesigned their conventional placement-based WIL activities or programs to enable students to meet…

Virtual worlds are a potential medium for teaching college-level chemistry laboratory courses. To determine the feasibility of conducting chemistry experiments in such an environment, undergraduate students performed two experiments in the immersive virtual world of Second Life (SL) as part of their regular General Chemistry 2 laboratory course.…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the "simSchool" (v.1) simulation as a tool for preparing student teachers for actual classroom teaching. Twenty-two student teachers used the simulation for a practice session and two test sessions; data included objective performance statistics generated by the simulation program, self-rated…

The purpose of this project was to evaluate the FEHR (formative evaluation and heuristic research) Practicum training model, a computerized simulation providing practical experience in decision-oriented educational research and evaluation. The report is organized into five chapters. Chapter one contains an introductory discussion of the needs and…