After completing a self-study for NCATE in 2010, Missouri Baptist University learned they had failed the diversity standard for their pre-service teachers field experiences. Their Regional Learning Centers, located in remote areas of Missouri, faced insurmountable challenges finding diverse classrooms required for their field experiences. Even the main campus field experiences did not necessarily provide the diverse students and students with special needs required by the standard – a common issue for many universities.
To solve the problem, Dr. Collum, with the support of his Dean, Dr. Melanie Bishop, worked with Stacy Kruse at Pragmatic Solutions and Dr. David Gibson, founder of simSchool, to develop a series of modules to simulate diverse classrooms for classroom management and teaching differentiated instruction.
For qualitative analysis, Dr. Collum developed a number of surveys to understand students perceptions before and after using simSchool. Initial data were encouraging – showing his students developed a better understanding of teaching diverse students.
The following year, Dr. Collum added two universities to determine if he could replicate his results across multiple universities. Again, the data indicated student understanding of diversity and differentiated instruction improved.
In the third year, he and Pragmatic Solutions expanded the study to include any university who wanted to take part. Participating universities received free simSchool student licenses, and for those free licenses, their students were to complete the simSchool modules and take the qualitative surveys.
With the additional simSchool and research support required for such a large study, Dr. Collum brought in Tech Matters, an educational consulting firm who began working with Stacy Kruse and simSchool in 2012.
simSchool Multi-University Study Pilot (MUSP)
In 2016, the study comprised twelve universities in the United States and Puerto Rico. Dr. Vickie Johnston from Florida Gulf Coast University and Drs. Brooke Blanks and Terry Smith from Radford University joined MBU, Pragmatic Solutions, and Tech Matters to design the research.
Building on previous studies, the Design Team developed a sequence of qualitative questions for surveys of students before and after their simSchool experiences. Quantitative data came from the simSchool modules.
Pragmatic Solutions set up MUSP modules in a course for each instructor from each participating university. Tech Matters created an online MUSP User Manual to assist instructors and their students throughout the study, and provided online technical support.
Drs. Collum, Johnston, and Blanks published the results and presented them at the 2018 SITE Conference in Washington, D.C.
From their presentation:
Implications of simSchool
- Use of simSchool to meet requirements of accredited organizations for the training of pre-service teachers in the understanding of diverse students.
- Use of simSchool as a means to help universities with teacher certification programs in the preparation of preservice teachers’ understanding of diverse learners when placement of pre-service teachers at schools with diverse students is limited or unavailable.
- Use of simSchool as a supplement to field experiences and course work in training pre-service teachers in understanding the needs of diverse learners.
- Use of simSchool by in-service teachers as a means of simulating a real classroom or simulating a particular student in order to try out different strategies to increase teacher effectiveness thus leading to a possible increase in student achievement.
- Use of simSchool by school districts as a way of providing training to in-service teachers on the understanding of the educational needs of diverse learners.
Conclusions
- The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of Simulation Based Learning as a tool to increase pre-service teachers’ understanding of the educational needs of diverse learners across multiple universities.
- Researcher’s conclusions based on analysis of all quantitative and qualitative analyses:
- The researcher determined that the results of this study supported the use of the SBL tool, simSchool, as an aid in increasing pre-service teachers’ understanding of the educational needs of diverse learners across multiple universities.
- This study also indicated support that simSchool has the potential to be used to train pre-service teachers in the understanding of various types of diverse students.