What do you do? How do you react without making the situation worse? This is exactly the type of scenario that ClassXR allows you to handle without experiencing stress or consequences.
Designed by and for teachers, ClassXR is an immersive experience that helps teachers learn how to teach differently, namely by putting on a virtual reality headset to experience various actual scenarios in a 360° immersive cylinder that projects interactive classroom settings.
Responding to a real need in teacher education
When Professor Mirela Moldoveanu of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education launched this project in 2019, she started from a simple, but worrisome, fact: once they complete their training, teachers quickly lose touch with advances in education research.
“Professional development is often ad hoc: teachers discuss problems in the teachers’ lounge and get solutions from their peers. The knowledge gained from research, which teachers so desperately need in order to improve and adapt their teaching methods, is not circulated widely enough,” she explained.
“The knowledge gained from research, which teachers so desperately need in order to improve and adapt their teaching methods, is not circulated widely enough.”
Mirela Moldoveanu
— Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
So how can we bridge this gap between new research and discoveries and the reality of life in modern classrooms? Professor Moldoveanu and her team believe that we need to go further than webinars: we need to bring research to life.
Research applied in an immersive classroom
It was with this in mind that the team discovered the potential of the University of Ottawa’s INNOVA lab and its immersive technologies. An idea took shape: Why not recreate teaching scenarios directly inspired by actual situations and test them in an interactive environment? More than a knowledge transfer, this would be a stimulating sensory experience in which the participant would make choices and learn from their decisions. And so Professor Mirela Moldoveanu and her co-researchers Professor Chantal Bois (uOttawa Faculty of Education), Professor Marie-Claude Gilbert (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières), and doctoral student Faten Trabelsi (uOttawa Faculty of Education) mobilized their knowledge to create ClassXR, a teaching experience on the cutting edge of educational research and based on the diverse reality of teaching in today’s classrooms.
These scenarios cover complex situations, such as dealing with autistic students, youth in crisis, or sensitive discussions on nutrition or the environment. No theories are proposed: everything is designed to reflect the reality of teaching today.
Teaching requires constant learning
Once in this immersive environment, participants are no longer spectators: they are in the thick of it. Mirela Moldoveanu notes that “what’s striking is that participants often spontaneously choose what’s considered to be the wrong answer.” This revealing observation confirms the utility of experiencing such dilemmas before encountering them in real life.
ClassXR is obviously intended for teacher education, but it is also an essential tool for newly minted teachers who are in the first five years of their careers, a time of rapid learning that is sometimes chaotic.
For example, one of these scenarios tests the physical position of the teacher. In many cases, the participant would instinctively lean towards a student in crisis and turn their back to the rest of the class. ClassXR allows them to make this mistake – and learn from it.
Each scenario includes a period of reflection, during which positive, research-based solutions are proposed. The emphasis is not on reprimanding the participant, but rather on guiding, explaining the impact of each strategy, and encouraging reflection. ClassXR bridges the gap between theory and reality in the classroom through a unique, immersive experience.
A long-lasting, living project
Today, ClassXR is entering a new phase. The team wants to cover more topics. “I see a lot of potential, namely to work on scenarios related to other topics, such as interventions with students with special needs or students from diverse cultural or religious backgrounds,” says Moldoveanu.
ClassXR is more than a high-tech tool: it offers a new vision of teacher training that involves learning by making mistakes in order to better succeed. For tomorrow’s teachers, it’s a unique opportunity to experience reality ... rather than entering the classroom unprepared.
