Airplane pilots use flight simulators
to learn and practice specific skills and techniques
in a risk-free setting.
Classroom teachers will likewise benefit
from having a safe place to improve their teaching
practices without worrying about hampering student learning.
To help with this, we've created Teaching
With Grace, an interactive web-based tool developed
through the Agile Teacher Lab based at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education.
Teaching With Grace provides a risk-free environment
for a live teacher and 3D virtual students
to engage in learning, to support teachers
in practicing specific pedagogical techniques.
A minimalist rendering of the virtual students
help teachers focus on listening to students.
The virtual students can be animated to reflect
learning tasks, such as writing, agreeing, waving, partnering,
and even being bored.
Teachers can also write on the blackboard
or show images on the screen just like in a real classroom.
Currently, we offer simulation focused
on the teaching practice of providing
equitable student-centered feedback.
Teacher feedback is powerfully associated
with student achievement.
Given large class sizes and time and curriculum constraints,
providing effective feedback is a daily challenge for novice
and experienced teachers alike.
The Agile Teacher Lab has developed a visualization
for effective feedback called the Feedback Tree.
Effective feedback begins at the roots of the tree
by recognizing and valuing the student perspective,
moving on to the branches with leaves
that offer corrections to improve student responses,
and ending with an apple, the fruit of learning that advances
student thinking and metacognition.
The overall goal of the simulation
is for teachers to offer meaningful feedback that
grows student understanding beyond low information
comments such as nice work and great job.
The teacher orally speaks to virtual students,
and the students verbally respond to the teachers
just as a real student would.
The simulation is designed to accelerate teaching expertise
through listening, problem-solving,
and effectively responding to students.
Throughout the simulation, teachers
receive instant and continuous feedback
to guide the development of their expertise.
Teachers can repeat simulations as many times
as they would like, review their performance,
and even replay their session in real time.
The conversation is guided by our AI technology, which
matches the teachers spoken statements
with the specific type of student feedback
that they have given to the students.
Then the system offers this analysis back
to the teacher as real-time feedback.
Teaching With Grace has virtual students respond to teachers
remarks in meaningful ways that promote dialogue
where teachers practice responding to the differences
that students may present in a real classroom.
Rather than interact only with the AI,
educators can also set up a multiplayer experience
for teacher teams.
The teachers can choose to play the teacher, a coach or one
of the students.
In this way, teachers can better understand the students'
perspectives and also see other teachers in action
with students.
Those playing the role of the students
can respond to the teacher's remarks
by using the pre-written responses provided
or their own words.
A built-in video chat system makes
it easy to organize the session and provide live feedback
and review sessions.
We see Teaching With Grace as a way
for both students and in-service teachers
to develop and improve essential evidence-based teaching
practices that have strongly been associated
with student learning and which often
take a full career to master.
We hope you join us in exploring Teaching With Grace.