Development of a Virtual Classroom for High SchoolTeacher Training

Hung-Hsuan Huang*, Yuki Ida, Kohei Yamaguchi, and Kyoji Kawagoe

College of Information Science & Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Japan*contact: hhhuang@acm.org

1 Introduction

In order to deal with the diversity of problems, teacher trainees need not only knowledgebut also repeated practice to accumulate experience. In Japan, however, the training ofteachers mainly relies on in-classroom lectures in universities. It is compensated withthe practice for a relatively short period, say only two to three weeks in real schools.Even though there may be some chances for practicing teaching skills in the teacher-training course provided by universities, these practices are usually conducted by peerrole-playings in small number of participants. This is far from real situations wherethey have to face dozens of teenagers. The teacher-training courses in Japan obviouslylacks the practice in teaching skill and the admission of classes. The result is, manyyoung teachers left their jobs in the first year due to frustration and other mental issues.Therefore, we started a project of building a virtual classroom as a training system forthe candidates of high school teachers.

Virtual environments have also been shown to be an effective tool for various train-ing tasks. Jones et al. [3] developed a job interview simulation platform, which supportssocial training and coaching in the context of job interviews. Williamon et al. [4] de-signed and tested the efficacy of simulated performance environments as a new trainingfacility for musician trainees. On the other hand, few studies have focused on the train-ing system of teachers in virtual environment. TechLive [1] is one of the examples. Thisapplication is also a VR simulated classroom with operator(s). In this system, one op-erator can only control one of the virtual students by selecting pre-defined animationsequences or driving it with a motion capture device in real-time.

2 Virtual Classroom System

The system layout of the proposed virtual classroom environment is shown in Fig.1.The trainee stands in front of a 100-inch screen and interacts with nine virtual studentsprojected on it. A Kinect is used to obtain the movement of the trainee’s head and handsas well as his voice. The virtual classroom is implemented with Unity 3D game engine.The 3D models of characters and virtual classroom are free contents downloaded from3D Moe Cafe 1 and the site of the 3D model creator, mato.sus304 2.

1 http://3dmoecafe.3dchaya.com2 http://matosus304.blog106.fc2.com

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Fig. 1. Environment of the system setup

Fig. 2. Architecture of the virtual classroom system

The architecture of the system is shown in Fig.2. All of the components are con-nected with the virtual agent platform, GECA [2]. Each virtual students is driven by anautonomous agent, i.e. the decision making module. Each decision making module hasits own inherent parameters so that the virtual students show a variety of the tendency inlosing their concentration. According to the virtual student’s concentration level, theyshow the behaviors, listening to the lecture, whisper, doze, sleep, bend upper body back-ward and cross hands behind head, and so on. These animation commands are deliveredto the Unity 3D animators by decision making modules to drive the characters.

In order to arouse the consciousness of treatment of accidental events, in additionto the normal behavior set, fall down to the floor due to some illness, stand up andgo to kick the wall, and so on were also implemented. We included the later one tosimulate the case of the students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) inmind. Due to the lack of an appropriate model to generate these situations automatically,currently they are triggered manually by an operator.

Considering user input, the measurement of the trainee was decided to be how wellhe or she can keep the attention of the virtual students for current prototype system.

The inputs are acquired by a MS Kinect sensor in three modalities, head direction, handmovements, and voice. Head direction is used to approximate the gaze of the trainee,since this cannot be done very precisely, the screen is divided into nine cells, each one isassigned to a virtual student. The view field is approximated as 30 degrees in horizontaldirection and 20 degrees in vertical direction. When this cone of gaze go over a specificcell assigned to a specific virtual student, its level of concentration is reset to high.About hand movements, the positions of elbows and wrists are checked whether thetrainee is moving his / her hands in the space higher than waist. If the trainee has highlevel activity of hands, the level of concentration of the students degrades slower. Thevoice intensity is analyzed, too. If the trainee’s voice has large dynamics of voice, thelevel of concentration of the students degrades slower. Each student is assigned with ashort ID, these IDs are defined as the keywords of speech recognition. When the ID ofa virtual student is called, its level of concentration is reset to high.

3 Evaluation Experiment and Conclusions

Six students (all male, all major in computer science, 22.3 years old in average) whoare in the teacher-training course of our university (three) or have the experience of be-ing cram school teachers (three) were recruited for the evaluation experiment. Beforethe experiment, they were asked to prepare a 10-minute lesson for high school studentsabout one of the two topics, Japan, the country or the hometown of the participants.After the experiment, the participants were asked to fill evaluation questionnaires withquestions in the categories of (E) virtual environment , (A) virtual student, (I) inter-action, and (U) utility of the system. The results were shown in Table 1. Overall, theparticipants had good impression of the system. There is need of the virtual trainingsystem but its current state is not really satisfying. More animations are required, anenvironment allowing the teacher to get closer to the students is demanded as well. Asthe future work, we are going to develop more realistic model of the virtual students’behaviors and incorporate a head mounted display (HMD) interface.

References

1. R. Barmaki and C. E. Hughes. Providing real-time feedback for student teachers in a virtualrehearsal environment. In 17th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI2015), pages 531–537, November 2015.

2. H.-H. Huang, A. Cerekovic, Y. Nakano, I. S. Pandzic, and T. Nishida. The design of a genericframework for integrating eca components. In L. Padgham, D. Parkes, and J. P. Muller, ed-itors, The 7th International Conference of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AA-MAS’08), pages 128–135, Estorial, Portugal, May 2008. Inesc-Id.

3. H. Jones, N. Sabouret, I. Damian, T. Baur, E. Andrre, K. Porayska-Pomsta, and P. Rizzo.Interpreting social cues to generate credible affective reactions of virtual job interviewers. InarXiv:1402.5039v2, 2014.

4. A. Williamon, L. Aufegger, and H. Eiholzer. Simulating and stimulating performance: intro-ducing distributed simulation to enhance learning and performance. Frontiers in Psychology,5(25):1–9, February 2014.

Table 1. Results of the questionnaire survey. The participants answered the questions with theoptions: 1: strongly disagree，2: disagree，3: slightly disagree, 4: slightly agree, 5: agree，6:strongly agree

ID Question Avg. S.D.

E1 I feel that I really stand in front of a class. 3.67 1.25

E2 The classroom environment is appropriately reproduced. 4.00 0.58

E3 The number of students is appropriate. 3.83 1.46

A1 I feel that each virtual student has its individuality. 4.00 0.58

A2 The reaction of the students surrounding the student who is doing troublesome be-havior was nature.

3.00 1.29

A3 The virtual students are human-like. 4.00 0.58

A4 The whispering animation look natural. 4.17 0.69

A5 The doze animation look natural. 4.83 0.37

A6 The behaviors of virtual students are natural. 4.00 1.53

A7 I feel the affinity from the virtual students. 4.17 0.90

A8 The timings of the students’ behaviors are appropriate. 3.50 1.12

I1 The virtual students behave appropriately according to my actions. 3.67 1.11

I2 I feel that my body movement affected the students. 3.17 0.69

I3 I feel that my gaze affected the virtual students. 3.33 0.47

I4 I feel what I said affected the virtual students. 3.83 0.90

I5 I feel that how much individual virtual student concentrates differs. 4.83 1.07

I6 I feel the irritability toward the virtual students. 3.00 1.00

I7 I feel that the virtual students understand what I said. 4.08 0.73

I8 I feel that the virtual students react when I call their names. 3.83 0.90

I9 I did something to make the virtual students concentrate on my lesson. 3.33 1.25

I10 I changed my way of instruction according to individual virtual student. 2.50 0.76

I11 I feel that I was really teaching the virtual students. 3.50 0.96

I12 I feel the inconvenience when I cannot get closer to the virtual students. 4.83 0.69

U1 I feel that the simulated troublesome behaviors of the virtual student help the traineeto improve their ability in handling emergent accidents.

4.33 0.75

U2 This kind of simulation system can replace the advices from veteran teachers. 4.00 0.58

U3 My current answer of last question is “no”, but I will think so if the system can befurther improved.

5.00 0.58

U4 The experience in using the system helps to improve how I teach in facing a realclass.

4.00 0.58

U5 My teaching ability will be improved if I can continue to use the system. 4.17 1.07

U6 I feel something uncomfortable from the system in comparing to my past experi-ence.

3.17 1.03

U7 This kind of simulated system can improve teaching skill. 3.75 0.38

U8 I enjoyed in using the system. 4.17 1.21

U9 The system is comprehensive. 4.67 0.94

U10 The cost-performance of this system is good if it can be purchased within severalhundred US dollars.

4.42 0.84

U11 It will be great if I have such a system in my home. 4.83 0.69

U12 This system does not only improve teaching skill but also presentation skill. 4.83 0.69